Mists of Pandaria discussion

[Lissa]

15% in 9 months is boredom? Come on Jester, that's a bit too large a group to say boredom, especially when the losses are accelerating.

Why, exactly? Do you have some sort of boredom magnitude, against which to compare this? All I have are historical MMOs, and the evidence shows that when people start to leave, declines of a quarter or more in a year are very common.

If it was truly boredom, don't you think you would see something akin to what happened with Wrath? Go look at the graphs that were previously posted. The loses in subscritions during those time periods covered two years and account for only 5%.

Your delusions are showing. Aion is losing subscriptions, it's been losing them since 2009. WoW subscribers are not going to Aion, look at the data. Rifts got a short infusion when it lauched, going to 600k subscribers, but within 3 months they had last 25% of those and they are below that mark still. No game has picked up these subs in any relevance. The data is there if you bother to look, refusing to recognize what the data says shows you're deluding yourself.

As I've tried to explain to you several times, competitors matter even if they are also losing subscribers. They do not have to be gaining subscribers in order to be keeping WoW's numbers lower than they otherwise would be. If you are unable to understand how this works, then I have no further help for you.

Except, which you continue to delude yourself here, they're not dragging away the number of people seen lost. Aion has been losing subscriptions, not gaining them, so there's no way they're pulling a significant number of people away from WoW. Rifts launched, pulled in 600k people, probably a large number from WoW initially, but after the first month lost a fair percentage of those that decided to try it out back to WoW (take a look around at forum posts in other places besides here Jester).

Again, stop deluding yourself. Initially, those instances weren't, but they have been nerfed considerably. Do you recall what Setesh was like before the first nerf? It was the ultimate in DPS races in the heroic instances, now, it's pathetically easy, and that happened within the first quarter. The instances have been nerfed down quite a bit prior to these major drops.

World of Warcraft subscriptions do not lapse the instant you stop playing, and you don't stop playing the instant you get frustrated. People leaving the game takes time. Most players pay by the 3-6-12 month interval. You can't just reason from precise timing, as if that was ironclad proof.

The mode was 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months until very recently (yearly was introduced in the last two weeks). And people typically will lapse towards the end of their subscription, not towards the start.

Except the subs fluctuated between 11.5M and 12M between start of Wrath and start of Cataclysm while China was stuck with just tBC. China hasn't played that major a role.

I don't even understand how this is an explanation of anything. Regardless, Blizzard has stated that the majority of these new losses are in East Asia. What you are saying here is in direct contradiction to what they've said, and since we're already taking their word on subscriber numbers, we might as well accept that as well, no?

You don't get it do you? Even though China was on tBC until about 6 months from Cataclysm launch when Wrath finally launched in China and then Cataclysm launched there in July, yet there wasn't some exodus from there during such a long stretch of tBC. Somehow I don't buy Blizzard's excuse. Actually take a look at other forums and where people are from, Blizzard can say that it's the far east, but looking at commentary, it looks like they're losing similar amounts of subs across all areas the game is played.

The only potential here of your reasoning, but gathering the various comments from people on line, not enough to account for this large a drop.

"I read some online comments, and asked my gut about the magnitude, and it told me nuh uh." Really? That's the argument? Really?

You use a lot of phrases like "not enough to account for". I would really like to know how you are determining this. I assume you're just trusting whatever your gut tells you, because I'm not seeing any other reasoning here.

The data has been posted earlier Jester. It's there if you want to actually look at it. If you want to ignore it, fine, but your reasoning for why WoW has lost such a significant number of subscriptions does not fit what the data is showing.

Announcing and being available are too different things. Diablo 3 is not out and thus Blizzard should not be losing subs due to this. If Diablo 3 was out, yes, you'd have a point, but it's not.
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Again, SW:TOR is not out. Likewise, you don't sit 3 to 6 months waiting for something to come out like this unless you're dissatisified with the game.

People anticipate. They ask themselves if they want to renew their subscriptions. If new and awesome games are right around the corner, maybe they decide not to renew. Maybe, as Treesh suggested, they'll fiddle with some non-MMO games for a few months. Skyrim. The TOR beta. Whatever. MMOs are a commitment to long-term play, and if you don't feel your commitment is going to matter in 3 months, maybe you stop playing today.

Again, you are totally missing how people stop their subs. They don't pay for the new time period, then immediately stop playing. If people follow that model, they're being idiots. People will play for most of the sub, atleast 50% through it, then stop the sub. You don't just stop playing a sub after paying for it.

You're kidding right? 9 months is not the normal lifespan for a MMO. MMOs are not like an Single Person RPG like Mass Effect or Skyrim. MMOs are all about building a longevity of character over years of play not some 40 to 60 hours. MMOs are designed to be time sinks. They are ment to last for years at a time.

Yes. MMOs last for years. And WoW has lasted for SEVEN. That's biblically old, in computer game terms. That's longer than any competitor, ever. That's a longer successful run than any game, ever. People have played this game to DEATH. If you sum up my /played, it's like I played the stupid thing as a full time job for over a year. This game is no longer current generation. It's barely even the generation before that. It's OLD. But no, I guess in your gut feeling model, 12 million people are supposed to play it forever, unless something goes wrong? Apparently, or else you wouldn't make statements like...

No, 12 million people aren't s'posed to play it forever, but likewise, you don't lose 15% of your subscribers in 9 months when there's no real competition against you either while retaining a very large subscriber base up to that point without doing something wrong. I would expect to see WoW lose 25% or more once SW:TOR and/or D3 had actually came out, not 15% 9 months after the release of a new expansion when subscrptions were staying pretty steady up to that.

You do not lose 15% of your subscribers without a seriuos competitor like this unless you are screwing up.

Could you tell me on which historical example you are basing these magnitudes? Or are you just going with your gut here?

-Jester

Take a look at the subscriptions of SWG after some of their later expansions. The expansions that were unpopular show a definite decline due to the actions of SoE. Now, go back and look at the subscriptions of games like EQ when WoW launched (actual competition). Notice the differences between the subscriber loses in the two models. What we've seen with WoW is akin to SWG, bad decisions by the developers led to people leaving. WoW is not seriously competing with anyone right now and they're facing loses similar to what SWG did in it's unpopular expansions.

The data is in front of you Jester, you can ignore it or you can actually pay attention and realize that the B team has screwed things up.