Cracks starting to show?

[Malakili]

Just got an email from Blizzard offering 7 days of free time. WoW is mortal after all it seems.

They've been doing that for years.  Every time I've ever taken a break I think I eventually got one of these things in my email.

[Velorath]

Apparently Mike Morhaime announced during the earnings call today that as of the end of March, WoW was at 11.4 million subs.  As other sites have noted, that would put it 600,000 below the 12 million sub mark they broke in October, which was also prior to the launch of Cataclysm.  He also noted that subs are dropping faster than they did after previous expansions.

[Paelos]

That's a fair number and about what I expected. I think by Q2, you'll see the real impact, which I believe is ~15-20% sub loss.

[Minvaren]

I was a bit puzzled by the number at being only 5% down from the peak, given how deserted a lot of us have said things are.

Then I followed a few links from this version of the story, and saw that population is now below WotLK levels.   

But one important thing to point out, and Mr. Morhaime touched on this as well, is that World of Warcraft's subscriber base does not change linearly. It fluctuates based on content consumption, which players seem to be doing a whole lot of -- at a more rapid pace -- with Cataclysm. "Subscriber levels have decreased faster than previous expansions," he said.

You make only 5 new zones, put 1-60 and 80-85 on downhill rails, and of course we're going to consume it faster...

[Paelos]

Honestly, I'm shocked the drop was as high as it was this early. That meant a lot of people decided to bail faster than I started seeing the personal dropoff, or they went into it eyes-wide-open on a monthly sub expecting not to play long.

[Rokal]

Eh? The numbers are from the end of March, that was long after many of you doom-sayers quit. WoW offers a very small discount for multi-month subs compared to other games like Rift or LOTRO. I don't know how many people are on monthly subs as compared to single-month subs, but everyone I know IRL (myself included) has always paid month-to-month. I don't care to save $3 if it means I'm locked into the game for three months even if I get bored after one. I don't know if any MMO company has ever detailed what % of their subscribers were on multi-month plans, but I would guess that unless heavily discounted (LOTRO), the majority are on single-month sub plans.

[Ingmar]

Technically I am still subscribed, personally.

[Paelos]

Eh? The numbers are from the end of March, that was long after many of you doom-sayers quit. WoW offers a very small discount for multi-month subs compared to other games like Rift or LOTRO. I don't know how many people are on monthly subs as compared to single-month subs, but everyone I know IRL (myself included) has always paid month-to-month. I don't care to save $3 if it means I'm locked into the game for three months even if I get bored after one. I don't know if any MMO company has ever detailed what % of their subscribers were on multi-month plans, but I would guess that unless heavily discounted (LOTRO), the majority are on single-month sub plans.

Quit playing and letting your subscription lapse aren't the same thing. I seriously doubt Blizzard released the numbers of people who cancelled recurring payments during Q1. It would be more realistic to post subscription income during that period. They know the numbers will be reflected truer in later quarters, and eventually year-end, but they are prepping the investors for a bad Q2 number, thus the "lower than previous expansion," quote. You never want to shock the investors with bad news.

[Rokal]

Right, but I'm saying if a huge portion of the WoW playerbase shared your opinion and stopped playing, I would venture to guess that most of those people a) Quit rather than continuing to pay for a game they weren't enjoying and B) Were not locked in to multi-month subs. I think multi-month players are probably the minority in WoW, though the % is probably higher in a community like f13. So I don't expect to see a huge % of subscriptions canceled as a result of multi-month subscribers finally running out of time, this is probably a small number of people compared to those who pay $14.99 a month and already stopped playing.

[Simond]

And you're basing that analysis on...what, exactly?

Anyway, Cataclysm has directly caused a 5% drop in subscriber numbers from the end-of-expansion-doldrums number when it should have been pushing the numbers up. That means Cataclysm is a failure and the design route they took was just flat out wrong. Someone tell Ghostcrawler to clear his desk, please.

[March]

And you're basing that analysis on...what, exactly?

Anyway, Cataclysm has directly caused a 5% drop in subscriber numbers from the end-of-expansion-doldrums number when it should have been pushing the numbers up. That means Cataclysm is a failure and the design route they took was just flat out wrong. Someone tell Ghostcrawler to clear his desk, please.

At a minimum, this.

No one on the business side can look at these numbers with anything but concern; that said, they still have plenty of lift under their wings, and tomorrow will bring opportunities to improve their offering... but Cata was a misstep.  Whether they recover and we view it as a stumble rather than a fall, only time will show.

...and on the topic of subscriptions, I may not be representative, but I will regularly carry subscriptions to games I have semi-abandoned, if only to keep an eye on them.  Cancelling often comes months after I have quit playing... sort of a more formal, I break with thee, I break with thee, I break with thee.

[caladein]

I see it's time to play "Let's massage three data points into meaning what we want them to."

- 11.5 million, ~21 November 2008 or just over a week after the release of Wrath of the Lich King.
- 12 million, ~7 October 2010 or a week before 4.0.1, the Cataclysm systems patch.  
- 11.4 million, end of March 2011 or a month before 4.1.

From what we know about primetime activity in the West, the two latest dates give similar values of about 900 characters per server per faction.  For context, that's probably a bit over half of the likely "true" peak from Cataclysm's launch period.

We've been coming off that peak for probably the whole year so I'm a little skeptical that primetime activity leads subscription numbers by 2+ months.  (Next quarter's earning call could push me one way or another, but we'd likely be dealing with a short-lived spike as a result of 4.2 then.)

Instead, I'm starting to think that primetime activity just isn't terribly useful on the timescales Internet slapfights are on.  Cataclysm had maybe twice (and at least 50% more) as many characters active but didn't produce a bump in subscriptions large enough to warrant a "WoW subscriber base reaches 12.5/13 million."-type release like after Wrath of the Lich King.

And of course, like a proper American, I'm ignoring Asia because I can't find much of anything useful.

[Paelos]

I agree with you. I'm basing my estimates off their financial data mostly. I think Q2 will show 15-20% max, with a 10% drop as a conservative estimate. They are doing themselves no favors with the 4.2 debacle.

[Samprimary]

Before we jump on board the KILL GHOSTCRAWLER train, I would tentatively suggest that as world of warcraft pals onward towards ending its first decade still on top of the heap, it becomes substantially easier for people to reach the burnout point. It's still the same game with the same character models from 2004 populating the world. Cataclysm could probably also have been viewed as a bitter pill, with the design team thinking 'we have to modernize the old world SOMEDAY' — so that you can fly in it or make a new character and play through the early game in a world that's not hopelessly outdated in design. It's not as shiny. There's not as much 'this is new!' And, stupidly, neither of the new races really come with their own lands. All the new content for goblins and worgen is played through once and then vanishes. This is definitely less sticky than Wrath, which dropped a whole new continent and heroic class. Pow whiz boom bang.

On top of that, this is the first expansion where you can immediately just log on, drop some cash, and fly around and see pretty much everything new. There is no exploration factor. It makes the world seem smaller than ever. You experience absolutely nothing new from the ground before getting to yawn across it in the air.

So, yeah. Not that I particularly care about ghost faced crawla one way or another, but those sorts of things should be at least brought up at his trial.

[Samprimary]

Oh, and there's also the issue of goblins. I know a lot of people said they would love goblins to be a playable race and OMG WILL RESUB IF MAKE GOBLINS PLAYABLE but there's no way that the appeal, once people get to gratify it, isn't extremely transitory. Because they're goblins. Squat green things that complain too noisily when you whack them in melee.
 
Worgen turned out okay but i would be greatly surprised if goblins didn't end up as the second least populous race, just above fucking gnomes. Either way, horde getting goblins means that it's time for Alliance numbers supremacy again. Yay?

[Paelos]

I'd toss in these comments at Ghostcrawler's trial as well, for the opposite reason. I want him gone.

Overall, we are pretty happy with our current raid balance. Most guilds that are trying seem to be making some progress. On some realms, we’re seeing pickup groups for at least the earlier bosses, which seems appropriate for where we are in the content cycle.

In the process of working on this change we actually discovered that the Luck of the Draw buff has not been working in Cataclysm at all, save for a few specific dungeons. This means that the difficulty in almost all normal and Heroic dungeons for those using the Dungeon Finder tool was higher than expected.

The bottom line is that we want Heroics and raids to be challenging, and that is particularly true now while the content is new and characters are still collecting gear. They’re only going to get easier from here on out. We want players to approach an encounter, especially a Heroic encounter, as a puzzle to be solved. We want groups to communicate and strategize. And by extension, we want you to celebrate when you win instead of it being a foregone conclusion.

To be clear, we don’t want healers to constantly run out of mana. We want them to run out of mana when they don’t play well. And we don’t want them to always fail. But we do want them to feel good when they are challenged, and overcome those challenges to succeed. When someone is wounded, we want healers to consider whether to use a slow, efficient heal (because they aren’t in immediate threat of dying) or a fast, expensive heal (because they are). That’s called triage, and it was notably missing from the Lich King healing environment. We think triage will make healing more fun. We’re making this change not to make healers sad by nerfing them, but to make healers happy by making the game more fun for them.

[Fordel]

It was the 80-85, not the content, but the dramatic decrease in player power, that really turned me off the expansion.


My Moonkin felt like total shit to play as soon as I hit 81, I thought I would adjust over time. I didn't.

[Khaldun]

I think Ghostcrawler's design vision has been a problem, but the bigger problem is simply one that every DIKU-derived design eventually runs into hard, and can't escape from. At some point, you only have two toggles: too hard for most people (and boring to them) or too easy for most people (and boring to them). You cannot tune your way out of it, and there is no way to add life or spark to the game once you've designed yourself into this space. The simplification and streamlining of everything in WoW and the control-freakery of the design team has killed both the arbitrage that animated the economy and some of the game mechanics and has killed most of the "world" feeling in the game. All that's left is kill the monster, get the loot, and that's what only has the too hard/too easy toggle.

[Rendakor]

Even assuming that's all true, it should be obvious that 'too easy' makes more money than 'too hard'.

[Xanthippe]

Even assuming that's all true, it should be obvious that 'too easy' makes more money than 'too hard'.

This.

[Samprimary]

I just hope that in the next expansion, there's a significant, engrossing line you have to go down, zone by zone, in order to unlock flying for that zone. It would be especially annoying to people like me (i rarely quest), but actually create a degree of immersion that they have to struggle to keep with e-z fly everywhere.

[Xanthippe]

I think Ghostcrawler's design vision has been a problem, but the bigger problem is simply one that every DIKU-derived design eventually runs into hard, and can't escape from. At some point, you only have two toggles: too hard for most people (and boring to them) or too easy for most people (and boring to them). You cannot tune your way out of it, and there is no way to add life or spark to the game once you've designed yourself into this space. The simplification and streamlining of everything in WoW and the control-freakery of the design team has killed both the arbitrage that animated the economy and some of the game mechanics and has killed most of the "world" feeling in the game. All that's left is kill the monster, get the loot, and that's what only has the too hard/too easy toggle.

It's more than that.

When a designer decides to stick to his guns in the face of fleeing players, and adopts the arrogant attitude GC did - that boils down to "just play the game the way it's meant to be played and you'll have fun eventually, I promise" - then the game is on the decline.

Devs need to pay attention to what players are doing, not dictate to them what they ought to be doing to have fun.  How many posts did Ghostcrawler make telling players to just do it the way he said and then they'd have fun?

I thought Blizzard was too smart to fall into this trap.

[caladein]

Oh, and there's also the issue of goblins. I know a lot of people said they would love goblins to be a playable race and OMG WILL RESUB IF MAKE GOBLINS PLAYABLE but there's no way that the appeal, once people get to gratify it, isn't extremely transitory. Because they're goblins. Squat green things that complain too noisily when you whack them in melee.
 
Worgen turned out okay but i would be greatly surprised if goblins didn't end up as the second least populous race, just above fucking gnomes. Either way, horde getting goblins means that it's time for Alliance numbers supremacy again. Yay?

In the West, there's currently an eight point spread between Alliance and Horde 85s.  I've been contributing to WarcraftRealms for almost as long as I've been playing WoW and I can't think of a time when there weren't more Alliance than Horde at level cap (if not in total, but I mostly just look at level cap numbers).

As for Goblins, as a percentage of their faction at level cap they are above Dwarves (9%) and Gnomes (8%) already (10%).  That's not bad considering they don't have either Paladins or Druids.  Assuming no major disruptions to the racial landscape (like a second pretty race), they'll settle into the middle-of-the-pack along with the rest of the non-Elves.

Also, you can tear the ability to fly everywhere from my cold Goblin-sized hands.

[Ingmar]

It is amazing to me you people keep trying to lay every single thing at GC's feet. He's just the mouthpiece for the entire dev team, they're not going to magically start making decisions you like if he leaves. He's not even in charge of half the stuff (or more) that people complain about.

[Sjofn]

It's like when the NY papers decide they hate a coach. Doesn't matter if it's his fault or not, HIS HEAD MUST ROLL.

[Ingmar]

It's just like, we should all know that Kalgan is primarily to blame for PVP sucking, but we blame GC for it anyway because he's the one who tells us why they did it that way, etc. He gets blamed for dungeons being too hard, when at least as much blame should go to Cory Stockton's team - you know, the people who actually design the encounters.

I mean, if you're WUA and you don't like the way your particular class systems changed, go right on and blame GC with my blessing, because he and his team are actually directly in charge of that. But f13 people should be smart enough to not just latch onto the guy who posts the most.

Or hey, blame the producer (Shane Dabiri) who presumably has to green light all these big decisions. Getting laser focused on "omg fire GC" isn't going to fix the game.

[Fordel]

The EVIL Kalgan to you sir!

[Nevermore]

If nothing else, Ghostcrawler should be fired for the current state of Elemental Shaman.

[Fordel]

Pretty much any caster that actually relies on actual cast times, has been more or less boned this expansion. In one aspect of the game or another.

[Sjofn]

I assume you mean pew-pew caster, because my holy paladin has been ridiculously fun. I mean my God, I'm even enjoying PvP. That hardly ever happens.

I've been trying an arcane mage. It makes my head hurt. :(

[Rokal]

And you're basing that analysis on...what, exactly?

I'm basing it off the same thing people saying "that number is going to take a huge plummet once muli-month subs like myself run out of sub time too". Anecdotal evidence. I don't think any company has actually said what % of their subscribers are multi-month subscribers, but based on people I know, the size of the discount for WoW, and how fickle MMO gamers are, I'd say the % is not high. At the least, my claim that "a small % of players are on multi-month subs" has just as little factual data to back it up as "a large % of players are on multi-month subs". I think in any business, people will usually opt to pay a smaller initial amount but a larger total amount, rather than paying a large amount up front even if it's a slightly better deal. See: rent to own, payment plans, loans, etc.

Anyway, Cataclysm has directly caused a 5% drop in subscriber numbers from the end-of-expansion-doldrums number when it should have been pushing the numbers up. That means Cataclysm is a failure and the design route they took was just flat out wrong. Someone tell Ghostcrawler to clear his desk, please.

Keep in mind that the 'end of expansion doldrums' sub numbers also included new 1-60 for free, and new race/class combos. It's not as though 12 million subscribers was based solely on the strength of Wrath. I know a ton of people (myself included) who resubbed a few months before Cata launched so that we could check out the new Azeroth.

[Sheepherder]

About the only spec that came out of this expansion better is Holy paladin.  Everything else tends to be clunky as all fuck, straight up broken, or a more derpy version of what it was last expansion.

And the encounter design has made me sometimes wonder if they and class design are on speaking terms.

[Simond]

It is amazing to me you people keep trying to lay every single thing at GC's feet. He's just the mouthpiece for the entire dev team, they're not going to magically start making decisions you like if he leaves. He's not even in charge of half the stuff (or more) that people complain about.

He's the one making the "Learn to play" blogs, he's the one front-and-centre for visibility and communication, so he's therefore going to be the one who gets it in the neck first. It's not like that's a new concept to MMOs or anything. 

[Fordel]

I assume you mean pew-pew caster, because my holy paladin has been ridiculously fun. I mean my God, I'm even enjoying PvP. That hardly ever happens.

I've been trying an arcane mage. It makes my head hurt. :(

Healers have their own silly going on, but yes, I am referring to the pew pew.

[WindupAtheist]

I wonder how many people will really bounce back from Rifts. I suspect now that WoW is in the decline phase anyway, it'll be more vulnerable to competitors. I wonder what SWTOR will do to them.