World of Warcraft down 800k Subscribers in Q3Nov 9th, 2011 at 11:09 AM by Pwyff

In an earnings call yesterday, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime has just confirmed that World of Warcraft has lost 800,000 subscribers in Q3, placing World of Warcraft at around 10.3 million players. Most of the losses came from the East, but Cataclysm simply wasn't a good expansion overall for WoW, as this is about a 1.7 million player loss from last year's reported number.

In other reported financial news, however, Activision has announced that they've beaten financial analyst expectations in the third fiscal quarter. They've tripled their profits with a strong push of digital sales.

Getting back to those World of Warcraft subs... Does anyone else find it incredible that WoW's subscription losses add up to more than double the entire population of many MMORPGs? Mind-boggling!

Thanks to Gamasutra for the heads up!

Tags: News, WorldofWarcraft

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# Nov 09 2011 at 3:37 PM Rating: Decent
pancakewizard
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I hate to admit it but I think WoW might be finally dying. But not because of players, because developers at Blizzard are getting lazy and giving into the casual player. Hardcore MMOs like EQ (which there is a new one in development) will basically destroy the hardcore population of WoW (what's left of it) leaving nothing but the 12-15 year olds who like to spam '****' in trade chat all day.

I only know 2 people going to Star Wars and I still don't understand why. I predict the same thing with Rift will happen with Star Wars, subs will go down and then 3-4 months later the majority of the people will be back. I still enjoy WoW but I also play with a mix or RL friends and people met throughout the years, but if Blizzard keeps it up, alot of hardcore players and raiders will end their WoW subscription for an MMO that's actually challenging but not overwhelming.

Also, this report failed to mention that the majority of the lost subs were from China, not the US or Europe.
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# Nov 09 2011 at 6:53 PM Rating: Decent
mamabert
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As a new player to WoW (and a veteran of EQ) the devs seem to be dumbing down the game. Everything is just about handed on a silver platter and where you can level a toon very easy( have 3 level 30's inside of a week, where as it can take up to a week to get one level 30 on eq, and can take up to more then a few years to max out a toon to level 85 and upteen thousands aa's. WoW it seems you can max out a toon in less then 6 months and there is where the problem lies as it's to easy to max a toon as compaired to other games. Players like a challange and not diseyland give aways.
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# Nov 09 2011 at 9:04 PM Rating: Good
Jallil
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if you take into consideration how long an expansion is out for WOW then to a new player lvling they would be half way through an expac or more if blizz had a slow lvling system. So in this case i agree that if ytou want to see endcame content while its still somewhat current you would not want to take a year to lvl to 85 now a days.
there are ways to slow down your lvling curve, like dont use boas, dont join a guild that has fast track. these two things alone will slow things down slightly. granted it does not solve everything and youll probably still out lvl the area you are in before you are finished with it but there are was to stop and enjoy the game still if you want to go though the new/old content.

as for other stuff being handed to you i think most (i hope) would agree that stuff like mounts at lvl 20 is nice. It sucked hoofing it for the first 40 lvls of the game.

there is still a challenge at lvl 80-85 until you get better equipment and imo the "hardcore" players just need to suck it up since out of the 10 million players/accounts im sure the majority of people are some form of casual/non-hardcore player.
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