World of Warcraft subscriptions continue a downward trend

by Eliot Lefebvre on Aug 3rd 2011 8:30PM

World of Warcraft, Fantasy, MMO Industry, News Items

"No king rules forever, my son." Those words were a big part of the capstone event for World of Warcraft's last expansion, but they may be equally appropriate for the game itself. According to reports from the company, WoW's subscription numbers have continued to drop in the quarter ending June 30th, with the game now holding approximately 11 million subscribers worldwide. It's a slower rate than the game had been bleeding players, but it's still a definite decrease.

According to president Mike Morhaime, the reason for the drop can be traced back to the time since the last expansion release, but even Morhaime admits that this is the fastest drop the game has seen during its run. There are obviously rumors that the next expansion is not so far away, but as it stands, WoW's longstanding grip on the MMO market is no longer quite as strong as it once was.

Source: WoW subscriber numbers continue to drop

Tags: activision, activision-blizzard, blizzard, blizzard-entertainment, business, industry, mike-morhaime, mmo-industry, subscriber-numbers, subscribers, world-of-warcraft, wow

Reader Comments (198)

@(Unverified)

you mis-read me, I mean even wow minus 300k subs towers over the next closest sub MMO

I don't think TOR is going to hit Blizzard subs as hard as people are talking about.
Most of Blizzards subs are outside of NA and Europe and that will be the biggest TOR market.

It will also require a beefier computer which a lot of WoW players don't have.

The sub revenue might drop dramatically but the numbers won't.

3 years ago if my son wanted to play a MMO then WoW would have been the best choice and I would have eaten the sub for him.
At present though there are loads of quality FTP MMOs that he can play instead and I don't have to buy a box plus expansions for him.

Expected.

Blizzard, pull Kaplan [Tigole] off Titan and back working on WoW, he actually had a clue, unlike whoever is in charge now. And stop listening to the "OMG EVERYTHING IS EASY" forum crowd.

@Unverfied B

Or wait, don't. Let the game die and SW:TOR take over please lol.

@Unverfied B

SWToR's going to likely be a great game, but I can pretty much Guarntee you it'll never meet the subs wow has now, let alone at its peak a bit ago (13mil)

WoW didnt just get its foot in the door early, it opened the door, pulled more people into MMO gaming than any developer thought possible, and as a result yeah, hundreds of games have come around, some good, some terrible, some great even (like im hoping for SWToR) but it deviates from the fantasy niche that wow set as the baseline (which im glad about, change o pace is good) and that in itself is going to keep a huge number of players from giving up wow to go play it.

As many have said before, even tho people still claim otherwise. No game is going to kill wow, wow itself will slowly die out.

@(Unverified)

you can't get more fantasy than Star Wars... fantasy doesn't just mean dwarfs and dragons.

@(Unverified)

My remark about TOR was semi-sarcastic. But Blizzard are really shooting themselves in the foot with Cata. The current slow bleeding of subs will turn into a massive exodus once TOR releases, and they have almost no time left to fix their problems.

@(Unverified)

"SWToR's going to likely be a great game, but I can pretty much Guarntee you it'll never meet the subs wow has now, let alone at its peak a bit ago (13mil)"

Really? You don't have data that says it wont, on the contrary Pre-order records have been broken. I have no idea what SW:TOR will be like after 1 year of playing it so I will not spout of any "guarantee's". However, I will say that all my friends that played WoW with me (for YEARS) all left, and are going to TOR. I haven't played WoW in over 2 months and my account expires this month. So my dislikes about blizzards greedy tactics haven't effected their numbers yet. Ill be one of the many that we will see in Q3.

@(Unverified)
I disagree. Great storytelling is great storytelling. If you look at movies which create a phenomenon for generations it isn't the genre that makes them powerful. It is the story. Star Wars has always been about the unfolding of a great story centered around the events of a small party. Wow has some intriguing bits of lore I can identify. But Wow has never woven a cohesive story for most of it's players. It keeps us from really bonding to our cyberselves as more than the sum of their spells and items. SWTOR will create a connection because although it's still fighting and collecting 10 of this and that from time to time, you are also drawn into your character as either you perceive them as acting or as you would act yourself. Casting decisions into the mix which change your character over time.

Watching the Esseles encounter with my wife this morning I was amazed at how much the experience seemed cinematic. I was actually thinking to myself what would I do in this situation.

When I enter BWD nothing makes me feel like I am doing anything but running for gear, even on my first time inside. I can't explain why anyone is inside BWD, who they are, where the came from, why they are important to anything and why it was important for me to kill them. Other than happening to occupy a building that I am invading they truly seem innocuous to the "struggle" to save Azeroth.

There is a recession going on. The recession has touched the WoW player base. These players have left subscription gaming, for the time being. When the economy emproves they will be back to play WoW.

WoW has or had around 2-3 mil subs in the US and EU with the rest being in Asia.

the rough 25%, 25%. 50% split is indicated in many of their press releases

it's losing numbers from those US and EU subs and we know this because Michael Morhaime stated this to shareholders when they first admitted to the numbers dropping earlier in the year.

those 4-6 million US and EU sub are were most of the income from WoW comes from.

in China, were the bulk of the numbers are, they only make 6% of their WoW income and primarily they are in that market not for the profit but for the marketing value of the numbers.

ie. so all the fanboys and marketers in the West can point at "10-12 million subs" and call it "the biggest game ever" and so forth.

except in Asia the game doesn't have subs...

and it sits in a market with games like Westward Journey Online II which way back in 2006 had 86 million players....

and that whole "biggest MMO ever" thing relys on western ignorance....

just a little real life perspective for you there outside the Blizzard PR bubble.

the game is in real trouble.

@(Unverified)

Bingo!

Wonder why so many are so unaware of this still...
(hmm, were you at the wedding reception this past weekend...=) )

One word for you: Hubris.

They've been demonstrating for years that since they've got millions of players they don't give a crap about individuals and finally it's starting to take it's toll.

Don't worry all those lost subs will come flocking back once the greatest publisher ever gives the word for them to activate the cashshop portion that is sitting on the alpha servers. Just think you'll be able to buy runs through all the raids with a cluster of personalized bots that you precommand to carry out the runs. No longer will you need to find 9 or 24 other people for the low low price of 9.95 and 19.95 respectively you can enter your own personal instance as many times as you want withing a 10 hour game period with server spawned bots to assist you. The only raidlock you'll need to worry about is those 10 hours, run it as many times as you wish. But don't worry about wasting lootdrops as all the loot tables will be revamped for this so every item dropped in your own instances are legacy items to trade amongst your characters. As a bonus upon your 10th & 25th purchases you'll earn titles unique to this optional feature along with access to a item rich vendor just for you with a new selection of items on a weekly basis. Oh funtimes ahead for the first and best mmo ever.

This shouldn't be a surprise. The game is really old and the content is starting to get extremely boring. Cataclysm has been a complete flop in my opinion, taking blizzard 6 months to release new 25 man raid? So glad I am done and over with that game.

I feel quite embarrassed about having re-subbed now. :D

@Utakata Summed Up my thoughts very nicely as a wow player from the first year till about two months ago.

@Acharenus

I was surprised anyone could read and understand that with all the sentence structure errors and what not to it. O.O

...but thanks anyway. :)

I'm sure having 11 times more subscribers than any other western based subscription mmo is really not that much of a problem yet. There are at least twice that number that have played and left already.

While I'm no fan of Activision Blizzard since Kotick arrived I will say I have no desire to see the flagship PC game die. People don't seem to realise how important such games are when consoles are making so much money. PC owners need products that people want to play. Wish away the popular PC games and those people don't suddenly make other PC games popular, they could just as easily give up on PC games altogether.

How many new mmos in the past 5 years have recieved funding because WoW is successfull? What happens to funding when investors don't see that anymore?

Like it or not while WoW might drive people nuts it was for a long time more polished and fun than all of it's competitors. I played it for about a year, I have no desire to go back but I still see credit were it's due.

@FrostPaw well but if you lose 1 million subscribers in the course of 8 months then suddenly it is a problem and you start asking yourself where you went wrong.... and with SWTOR and GW2 around the block as well as other titles luring loads of players in with F2P, I'm thinking this is just the start ;) ... and rightfully so. WoW has stagnated for 4 years now with nothing new or exciting just a bunch of gimmicks... it's about time that pays off in some serious sub drops...

Also I'm still baffled to see that people do not cringe at the fact that it is the only western MMO that has success in Asia... where they like their games grindy.... ;)

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World of Warcraft subscriptions continue a downward trend

Reader Comments (198)

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 1:07AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 1:05AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 1:14AM Unverfied B said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 1:16AM Unverfied B said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 1:23AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 1:25AM jslim419 said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 1:26AM Unverfied B said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 11:13AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 12:38PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 1:56AM Konfess said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 1:57AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 12:21PM SFGamer69 said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 2:13AM JoeH42 said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 2:24AM Amusednow said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 2:29AM Jvalen85 said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 2:51AM pcgneurotic said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 3:26AM Acharenus said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 5:03AM Utakata said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 5:26AM FrostPaw said

Posted: Aug 4th 2011 6:07AM eLdritchZ said

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