Mists of Pandaria discussion

[Lissa]

Did you bother to look at the charts at all there Jester? Take another look at Rift, launch in March, pops up to 600k in April/early May, drops to 450k subs in June/July. Now, given, it's only been three months, but that's a drop in subscriptions from it's peak.

Once again: Rift did not exist in 2010. Therefore, it is one potential source of bleed from WoW during the 2011 year. I do not see how this is even slightly controversial.

Now you say, don't count Aion out. Ummm...4 Million subs in 2009, down to 3 Million subs in 2011.

This is in no way a response to what I wrote:

Just because they're decreasing, doesn't mean there is no effect. Absent Aion, some of those three million mostly Korean players might have chosen to say in WoW, or joined WoW. That's all competition, and it affects Blizzard's numbers

Indeed, what I wrote seems a pretty decent response to your response, so I'll just leave it.

You can try and massage the results however you like, but the over-riding situation here is this: WoW is losing subscriptions because of a change in how they do things. It can be seen with the start of Wrath, but stayed pretty constant once is dropped down, but right now, the situation is does not look to be following that with WoW by the way Blizzard is acting.

Either your ability to pick out causes from a complex mess of interacting factors is substantially better than mine, or you're just writing whatever causal story you prefer onto the data. What makes your story better than, say, Bolty's?

"Here, have 4 months of play time if you buy the CE of Diablo 3." "Have Diablo 3 free if you pay for a 1 year subscription to WoW." You start to see the point yet?

As I said elsewhere, Blizzard does not want to compete with themselves. Therefore, they package their games together, to try and soften the blow.

Next week will give us a picture of just how bad the situation is when ATVI releases 3 Quarter results.

Yes, no doubt it will be terrible for them, having the most successful MMO ever by a factor of merely 3.9, rather than 4. They should probably just fire the whole "B team" now, and be done with it. If they continue at this precipitous rate of decline, WoW will cease to exist by... 2023! And, by a mere 2019, it won't even have the most subscribers of any MMO ever. Disaster!

-Jester

Investors, though, seemed to focus on Activision's other big game, "World of Warcraft," as the company's stock fell after the results came out. That's because the game ended the quarter with 10.3 million active subscribers, down from 11.1 million from the previous quarter.

And, down another 800k subscribers to 10.3 Million. You still want to try blaming this on something other than the B team Jester? 1.7Million lost, 15% of their subscribers, in just 9 months since the launch of a new expansion. You don't lose 15% of your player base like that with no real competition in just 9 months unless you're doing something wrong and alienating people. Face it, the B team has screwed up and now Blizzard is paying for it.