Mists of Pandaria discussion

[Tuftears]

Personally I think the biggest issue is that once you chew through the content, you're left with a grind that feels like, well, a job. Picture a game where the heroics are back to being easy-- do you really care, once you've got all the VPs you need? Making the heroics hard makes it harder to get to the VPs, but really only increases the amount of time it takes to cap out. Doing Firelands dailies is just a varied grind. Doing arena matches or rated BGs for conquest points, another kind of grind.

This is a hard problem to solve, and I don't think it's going to be solved in WoW. You simply cannot shovel content fast enough. That seems to me the real reason they made the raid content hard-- they wanted it to be consumed more slowly-- and players bit them back for it, rightly.

[Lissa]

An interesting statistic:

Total time played per week by Game

Now, strictly WoW playtime over the last month

now, strictly League of Legends playtime over the last month

Now, the sample size is small, but WoW use to be #1 for the last several years on XFire and within the last month, the WoW numbers have gone down on XFire. Right now there are about 10k more people on XFire playing LoL than WoW (again, small sample size, but this is 34k to 23k). Looking around various other places, there are other signs as well with people getting fed up with WoW.

And here is something that is worth pondering that I found from someone on MMO-Champion:

The worst thing that can happen to World of Warcraft is the permanent loss of their veteran players. New players come and go, that's expected; some never make it past a trial version, others play for a few months.

When a veteran player leaves for good, that means a new or different gaming experience is worth more than their years and years of experience, friendships and accomplishments. How often do you hear about someone who quit WoW for Rift, LotR, or any other game, and they come back because "If I'm gonna play a WoW clone, I may as well play the one I invested so much in"? When those people aren't coming back to WoW from other games, you're losing a commodity worth 2-3x as much as any new player who subs.

Should those vet players grow sick enough of WoW, or Blizz/Act, it will have a devastating affect on the future of the game, one that cannot be offset by new players who have nothing to lose by quitting. If you're not wholly invested in the success of a game or product, you won't talk about it, won't defend it, and won't champion its cause. Blizz loses the best advertising it has when a veteran or burnt out player leaves.

And that is the real problem Blizzard is truly facing. The fact that their veteran players are leaving and not returning after taking a hiatus. The fact that people that have invested so much time into WoW are willing to just throw aside the time they spent and go to something else should worry Blizzard a lot. Casual players can be very fickle, but holding on to your veteran players is what can make or break you cause those vets can pull people in and keep them. If the vets are willing to leave the game and tell people why they left the game, that can have a dramatic effect on future subscriptions. Right now Blizzard is trying to plug the holes in the dam with their fingers, but there's still plenty of water being lost no matter how they try to stop the flow.

[Jester]

And that is the real problem Blizzard is truly facing. The fact that their veteran players are leaving and not returning after taking a hiatus. The fact that people that have invested so much time into WoW are willing to just throw aside the time they spent and go to something else should worry Blizzard a lot.

It's a game. People play it to have fun. That usually means picking up a game, fiddling with it for a few weeks/months, and stopping. WoW is now on year seven, and has only just now stopped growing. What is amazing is not that World of Warcraft is losing players. All games lose players. What is amazing is that it still has so many after so long.

-Jester

[Quark]

Can I qualify my statements? The raid fights themselves are pretty much at their top shape for the game. At least as I saw in the first Cata tier before I quit again. I find that all the supporting elements have fallen by the wayside, all stuff that is driven by the philosophy and high-level design of the developers.

Case in point: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/20437...ice-a-week

[Lissa]

And that is the real problem Blizzard is truly facing. The fact that their veteran players are leaving and not returning after taking a hiatus. The fact that people that have invested so much time into WoW are willing to just throw aside the time they spent and go to something else should worry Blizzard a lot.

It's a game. People play it to have fun. That usually means picking up a game, fiddling with it for a few weeks/months, and stopping. WoW is now on year seven, and has only just now stopped growing. What is amazing is not that World of Warcraft is losing players. All games lose players. What is amazing is that it still has so many after so long.

-Jester

Not really. Just about every single MMO peaks around the 5th to 6th year and declines, just not as rapidly as WoW is going through. Go back and take a look at subscribers for UO, Asheron's Call, and EQ, you'll see the same situation, subscribers build for the first few years, a peak occurs around the 5th to 6th year of the MMO, then declines. What is telling is the loss rate.

[Taelas]

Not really. Just about every single MMO peaks around the 5th to 6th year and declines, just not as rapidly as WoW is going through. Go back and take a look at subscribers for UO, Asheron's Call, and EQ, you'll see the same situation, subscribers build for the first few years, a peak occurs around the 5th to 6th year of the MMO, then declines. What is telling is the loss rate.

WoW is not just any MMO.

If you throw together Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, EverQuest, and let's for argument's sake throw in Dark Age of Camelot, you would get around one million subscribers. WoW has, currently, over 11 million active subscribers.

That is less than ten percent. WoW has lost as many subscribers as those MMOs put together.

WoW is not going to "die." It is ridiculous; any other MMO would be considered wildly successful with less than 5% of its current subscriber base.

[Lissa]

Not really. Just about every single MMO peaks around the 5th to 6th year and declines, just not as rapidly as WoW is going through. Go back and take a look at subscribers for UO, Asheron's Call, and EQ, you'll see the same situation, subscribers build for the first few years, a peak occurs around the 5th to 6th year of the MMO, then declines. What is telling is the loss rate.

WoW is not just any MMO.

If you throw together Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, EverQuest, and let's for argument's sake throw in Dark Age of Camelot, you would get around one million subscribers. WoW has, currently, over 11 million active subscribers.

That is less than ten percent. WoW has lost as many subscribers as those MMOs put together.

WoW is not going to "die." It is ridiculous; any other MMO would be considered wildly successful with less than 5% of its current subscriber base.

Your comments show you obviously don't understand. The point is to watch the trends, not the number of subscribers, but the trends of subscribers. Hell, throw in Legacy as another one to look at, it was the "King" until about halfway through Vanilla with over 3 Million subscribers, but it too followed the trend, after 5 to 6 years, it started losing subscribers. The biggest thing to take away is this: the loss rate that WoW is seeing is far higher than the loss rate seen by those other MMOs, those other MMOs didn't loss 8% of their subscriber base in 6 months after their peak. Sheer numbers is not a useful statistic here, percentages and loss rates is a better thing to look at and WoW is simply losing its subscribers faster than previous MMOs that peaked.

[Taelas]

Your comments show you obviously don't understand. The point is to watch the trends, not the number of subscribers, but the trends of subscribers. Hell, throw in Legacy as another one to look at, it was the "King" until about halfway through Vanilla with over 3 Million subscribers, but it too followed the trend, after 5 to 6 years, it started losing subscribers. The biggest thing to take away is this: the loss rate that WoW is seeing is far higher than the loss rate seen by those other MMOs, those other MMOs didn't loss 8% of their subscriber base in 6 months after their peak. Sheer numbers is not a useful statistic here, percentages and loss rates is a better thing to look at and WoW is simply losing its subscribers faster than previous MMOs that peaked.

My point is, you cannot compare WoW to any other MMO. It is an entirely different beast. You are looking at ants and trying to compare their life cycles to bears. It doesn't work.

[Tal]

My point is, you cannot compare WoW to any other MMO. It is an entirely different beast. You are looking at ants and trying to compare their life cycles to bears. It doesn't work.

How is WoW a different beast from other MMOs? What is your criteria for an MMO that makes such a comparison not work?

[Lissa]

Your comments show you obviously don't understand. The point is to watch the trends, not the number of subscribers, but the trends of subscribers. Hell, throw in Legacy as another one to look at, it was the "King" until about halfway through Vanilla with over 3 Million subscribers, but it too followed the trend, after 5 to 6 years, it started losing subscribers. The biggest thing to take away is this: the loss rate that WoW is seeing is far higher than the loss rate seen by those other MMOs, those other MMOs didn't loss 8% of their subscriber base in 6 months after their peak. Sheer numbers is not a useful statistic here, percentages and loss rates is a better thing to look at and WoW is simply losing its subscribers faster than previous MMOs that peaked.

My point is, you cannot compare WoW to any other MMO. It is an entirely different beast. You are looking at ants and trying to compare their life cycles to bears. It doesn't work.

Sorry, but you're wrong. Just because WoW has more subscribers does not mean it's not following the general dissolution of other MMOs. Look at all the successful MMOs and you will see the same thing that is going on with WoW. After 5 to 6 years the MMO peaks in popularity then starts to dwindle as subscribers move on (usually because of age). If you also look at those other MMOs for their loss rates, it's relatively slow with the decent getting larger as it moves away from the peak. Where WoW differs from this is that the rate of loss is much larger than see in other MMOs that have been following the same cycle as WoW has lost 8% of its subscribers in just 6 months from its peak. No prior successful MMO has lost that percentage of subscribers that quickly, and that's telling about WoW's direction.

[Jester]

Your comments show you obviously don't understand. The point is to watch the trends, not the number of subscribers, but the trends of subscribers. Hell, throw in Legacy as another one to look at, it was the "King" until about halfway through Vanilla with over 3 Million subscribers, but it too followed the trend, after 5 to 6 years, it started losing subscribers. The biggest thing to take away is this: the loss rate that WoW is seeing is far higher than the loss rate seen by those other MMOs, those other MMOs didn't loss 8% of their subscriber base in 6 months after their peak. Sheer numbers is not a useful statistic here, percentages and loss rates is a better thing to look at and WoW is simply losing its subscribers faster than previous MMOs that peaked.

Leaving aside the obvious disagreement with the whole setup (WoW is just an other MMO, rates are the key to understanding), let's look at the argument.

You claim that MMOs go through 5-6 year life cycles, then start to lose subscribers. This is (per your argument) our base rate, our expected result. WoW gained subscribers until 2009, stayed steady at 11.5-12 million, at then declined slightly. So, in other words, WoW is a normal MMO. No need to invoke some special "B team failure," it's just what we expect from games as they get old.

But what about rates of loss, you say? Well, let's look at Lineage*, which (you say) is a good comparison. Lineage peaked at about 3 million in 2002, and began its decline in 2004. By 2005, it was down to 2 million, a loss of 33%. By mid-2006, it was down another 20% to 1.5 million. By 2007, 1 million. That's three times as fast as WoW is declining. Of course, they were competing against themselves, Lineage 2 having entered the market.

When Everquest was beaten by WoW, it lost almost half its player base in a single year - and that includes EQ2. Ultima Online lost over 20% of its player base between 2004 and 2005. Final Fantasy XII lost 33% of its subscribers, 2009-2010. Other major competitors, like Aion, Warhammer, and Age of Conan spiked and crashed within one year, losing 30-90% of their peak players. I don't know why you think 8% is unprecedented, but it's not even large. When most MMOs die, they die quickly.

So, I don't quite know how else to say this, except that you're wrong. If we don't use your logic, you're crazy to compare the most successful game ever by a factor of 4 with its competitors, as if they were the same. If we do use your logic, practically every game ever to exist contradicts your claims about WoW. Either way...

The other factor that needs considering is that the total MMO market has not grown since 2009. That means more direct competition, less dynamic competition. If WoW has only dropped 8%, that means new entrants have not yet taken much share from them. Remarkable, really, for a 7 year old game in a stagnant market.

(For data, I'm using mmodata.net.)

-Jester

* I assume by "Legacy" you mean "Lineage." If not, I'm not sure what game you mean.

[TheDragoon]

I think there's definitely some validity to the argument that WoW is different than other MMOs. For one, simply by the sheer number of subscribers, WoW has reached a much broader audience than any of the other games. I think it would be a mistake to assume that WoW's playerbase has the same characteristics as other MMOs have had. The big reason that I have seen for WoW attracting more people is because it has more broad appeal which means that it is drawing in different types of people than the other games. WoW has attracted hardcore raiders, people looking for PvP experiences, and a huge number and diversity of more casual groups such as friends and family who are just looking for something to do together, explorers, fans of the Warcraft universe, and RPG fans just to name a few. The fact that WoW can reach out to such a huge, diverse audience is what has allowed it to collect such a huge following, the extent to which no other game has achieved.

So I think there are some differences that need to be accounted for, and it also makes it more difficult to pinpoint exactly what is driving people away. For that, you'd need access not only to the number of people leaving the game but details of what type of player they are and what the reason is for leaving. Interestingly, Blizzard does have some of that data since they have surveys they ask people to fill out when they cancel their accounts, so one would think that they're looking long and hard at that data and would look to address the concerns it raises as they continue to develop and expand the game.

[Lissa]

Your comments show you obviously don't understand. The point is to watch the trends, not the number of subscribers, but the trends of subscribers. Hell, throw in Legacy as another one to look at, it was the "King" until about halfway through Vanilla with over 3 Million subscribers, but it too followed the trend, after 5 to 6 years, it started losing subscribers. The biggest thing to take away is this: the loss rate that WoW is seeing is far higher than the loss rate seen by those other MMOs, those other MMOs didn't loss 8% of their subscriber base in 6 months after their peak. Sheer numbers is not a useful statistic here, percentages and loss rates is a better thing to look at and WoW is simply losing its subscribers faster than previous MMOs that peaked.

Leaving aside the obvious disagreement with the whole setup (WoW is just an other MMO, rates are the key to understanding), let's look at the argument.

You claim that MMOs go through 5-6 year life cycles, then start to lose subscribers. This is (per your argument) our base rate, our expected result. WoW gained subscribers until 2009, stayed steady at 11.5-12 million, at then declined slightly. So, in other words, WoW is a normal MMO. No need to invoke some special "B team failure," it's just what we expect from games as they get old.

But what about rates of loss, you say? Well, let's look at Lineage*, which (you say) is a good comparison. Lineage peaked at about 3 million in 2002, and began its decline in 2004. By 2005, it was down to 2 million, a loss of 33%. By mid-2006, it was down another 20% to 1.5 million. By 2007, 1 million. That's three times as fast as WoW is declining. Of course, they were competing against themselves, Lineage 2 having entered the market.

When Everquest was beaten by WoW, it lost almost half its player base in a single year - and that includes EQ2. Ultima Online lost over 20% of its player base between 2004 and 2005. Final Fantasy XII lost 33% of its subscribers, 2009-2010. Other major competitors, like Aion, Warhammer, and Age of Conan spiked and crashed within one year, losing 30-90% of their peak players. I don't know why you think 8% is unprecedented, but it's not even large. When most MMOs die, they die quickly.

So, I don't quite know how else to say this, except that you're wrong. If we don't use your logic, you're crazy to compare the most successful game ever by a factor of 4 with its competitors, as if they were the same. If we do use your logic, practically every game ever to exist contradicts your claims about WoW. Either way...

The other factor that needs considering is that the total MMO market has not grown since 2009. That means more direct competition, less dynamic competition. If WoW has only dropped 8%, that means new entrants have not yet taken much share from them. Remarkable, really, for a 7 year old game in a stagnant market.

(For data, I'm using mmodata.net.)

-Jester

* I assume by "Legacy" you mean "Lineage." If not, I'm not sure what game you mean.

I was referring to Lineage. However, every single game you just noted lost it's subscribers when? Every single one was up against WoW coming into the market and I'm sure you can see those subscribers that left most of those MMOs went to WoW. What is WoW competing against that would have caused it to lose 8% of it's subscribers in 6 months? Look at your statistics, when is the drop occuring with all of those MMOs and what was available? Each one of the successful MMOs (UO, Lineage, EQ) all lost subscribers when WoW came out. And your own statistics shows that WoW was fairly constant from 2009 to late 2011 because the market was stagnant. And at present, the market is still stagnant, yet WoW has lost 8% of it's subscribers in 6 months where as all those other MMOs lost them when the 800lb gorilla entered the room. WoW has no 800lb gorilla to go against and is losing people at a hefty rate.

[Jester]

What is WoW competing against that would have caused it to lose 8% of it's subscribers in 6 months?

...

WoW has no 800lb gorilla to go against and is losing people at a hefty rate.

Aion - the largest (non-WoW) MMO ever, with 3-4 million subscribers. Half of WoW's subscribers are in Asia. Wouldn't that be the obvious answer?

Also Rift - which peaked at about 600,000 subscribers. That also looks like about the size of dent left in WoW's subscriptions.

-Jester

[Lissa]

What is WoW competing against that would have caused it to lose 8% of it's subscribers in 6 months?

...

WoW has no 800lb gorilla to go against and is losing people at a hefty rate.

Aion - the largest (non-WoW) MMO ever, with 3-4 million subscribers. Half of WoW's subscribers are in Asia. Wouldn't that be the obvious answer?

Also Rift - which peaked at about 600,000 subscribers. That also looks like about the size of dent left in WoW's subscriptions.

-Jester

Aion is hardly an 800lb gorilla and you know it.

Likewise, WoW lost 800k subscribers, that doesn't account for the 200k difference between it and Rift. Likewise, Rift has lost subscribers, so that shows even more that Blizzard hasn't lost that many to other MMOs. Something else is making WoW lose subscribers, and it isn't competing MMOs on the market at this time.

[Jester]

Aion is hardly an 800lb gorilla and you know it.

You asked me who the competition was, that was taking WoW's (slightly) decreasing share of the market. I pointed out about four million subscribers worth of new games, from key markets, all to explain a measly 800,000 fall in WoW's player base. You tell me this isn't enough, it's no "800lb gorilla". Is there any satisfying this argument? Because if the *second largest MMO ever* is not enough, I don't know what even could be. Aion is huge, by any standard except World of Warcraft itself.

Likewise, WoW lost 800k subscribers, that doesn't account for the 200k difference between it and Rift.

Because either 100% of WoW players went to Rift, or none of them did? Could it not be that Aion and Rift each took a chunk? Or that some left for other games, some left the market, and yet others started playing for the first time? The numbers don't have to equal each other perfectly to matter.

Likewise, Rift has lost subscribers, so that shows even more that Blizzard hasn't lost that many to other MMOs. Something else is making WoW lose subscribers, and it isn't competing MMOs on the market at this time.

The whole market is down maybe 1 million. If 100% of those are from WoW, then yes, that explains it. I don't think it is plausible that this is the case - that would mean that no other game is losing players, period, including Aion, including Rift, and they clearly are.

Regardless, the basic content of your argument is obviously contradicted by the data. This is not an unprecedented decline in subscribers, either in percentages or absolute terms. However, I am rapidly coming to the opinion that you are not interested in the data, but merely adapting your argument to whatever will support your prior idea: that the B team wrecked WoW.

-Jester

[Lissa]

Aion is hardly an 800lb gorilla and you know it.

You asked me who the competition was, that was taking WoW's (slightly) decreasing share of the market. I pointed out about four million subscribers worth of new games, from key markets, all to explain a measly 800,000 fall in WoW's player base. You tell me this isn't enough, it's no "800lb gorilla". Is there any satisfying this argument? Because if the *second largest MMO ever* is not enough, I don't know what even could be. Aion is huge, by any standard except World of Warcraft itself.

Likewise, WoW lost 800k subscribers, that doesn't account for the 200k difference between it and Rift.

Because either 100% of WoW players went to Rift, or none of them did? Could it not be that Aion and Rift each took a chunk? Or that some left for other games, some left the market, and yet others started playing for the first time? The numbers don't have to equal each other perfectly to matter.

Likewise, Rift has lost subscribers, so that shows even more that Blizzard hasn't lost that many to other MMOs. Something else is making WoW lose subscribers, and it isn't competing MMOs on the market at this time.

The whole market is down maybe 1 million. If 100% of those are from WoW, then yes, that explains it. I don't think it is plausible that this is the case - that would mean that no other game is losing players, period, including Aion, including Rift, and they clearly are.

Regardless, the basic content of your argument is obviously contradicted by the data. This is not an unprecedented decline in subscribers, either in percentages or absolute terms. However, I am rapidly coming to the opinion that you are not interested in the data, but merely adapting your argument to whatever will support your prior idea: that the B team wrecked WoW.

-Jester

Aion has been around for longer than WoW's decline. WoW was still on a slight increase when Aion came into the picture. And if anything, Aion more likely has affected FF12 and 14 more than WoW where those two (FF12 and 14) had a primarily Asian subscriber base. Also, did you bother to note that Aion has lost over 1 million subs since it's peak in late 2009/early 2010?

Likewise, Rift has been losing subscribers as well, not gaining them. They had an initial jump and now, like WoW, they're losing subscribers.

I think you're not looking at the data in the proper light. You throw out the data points, then failed to properly analyze those data points trying to point that when various MMOs lost people, it was after their peak by more than two years. There's a huge difference in losing 30% two years after you peak because another MMO has entered the market that has pulled people away with definite game play that was better at the time and losing 8% of your subscribers in 6 months after a new expansion with no real competition.

Next week, we'll get to see the 3rd quarter results for Activision-Blizzard and we'll see what the subscriber loss looks like then (but looking at how Blizzard was reacting during Blizzcon, it's going to be bad).

[Jester]

Aion has been around for longer than WoW's decline. WoW was still on a slight increase when Aion came into the picture. And if anything, Aion more likely has affected FF12 and 14 more than WoW where those two (FF12 and 14) had a primarily Asian subscriber base. Also, did you bother to note that Aion has lost over 1 million subs since it's peak in late 2009/early 2010?

We agree players are leaving the market. The overall numbers are down by about a million. But the entrance of Rift into the market is increasing, not decreasing the total picture, because it had zero players prior to 2011. It is "down" relative to its peak, but still a net gain of half a million players that had to come from somewhere. Most weren't from outside the MMO market, because the market has shrunk by a million. Hence, WoW looks to be a prime candidate.

Aion's decline from 4 to 3 million does not necessarily mean WoW players aren't moving to it. It could be (for instance) that Aion players are leaving the market entirely, but WoW players are giving Aion a try. There are plenty of permutations, and these subscription figures are just aggregates - they don't show us inter-game flows.

Regardless, this is all beside the big point, which is that WoW is not experiencing any historically unprecedented decline. Not in speed, not in scale, not even in absolute numbers. If people are leaving, that's to be expected, because the game is a full seven years old. What is remarkable is not the speed of their departure, which is not yet very impressive, but rather the length of their endurance. What other 7 year old game has remained on top of its genre? Has that ever happened? Even once?

I think you're not looking at the data in the proper light. You throw out the data points, then failed to properly analyze those data points trying to point that when various MMOs lost people, it was after their peak by more than two years.

Hunh? Show me where, because I'm starting to wonder if you're looking at the data at all... most MMOs have big declines very quickly after their peaks, because most MMOs are flash-in-the-pan games that fail to compete with WoW. Warhammer. Age of Conan. Rift. Lord of the Rings. Even Aion, although even after peaking and falling, it's still the 2nd largest ever. Even longer-running games, like EQ, Lineage, Final Fantasy XI and Ultima Online had large, single-year drops of over 20%, directly from their top "plateau" levels.

So, what you're saying fits... no games. Can you name me even a single game that bled to death, a few % at a time, over multiple years? I can't. Lineage is the closest, and we've already been over those numbers.

If all you're saying is that games do well, plateau, then people eventually get bored with them and leave, then this is not any different from what the rest of us are saying. But that wasn't the strong part of your claim. The strong part was that WoW has seen unprecedented drops that break the pattern, and suggest some unique incompetence on the part of the B team. This is the opposite of true.

There's a huge difference in losing 30% two years after you peak because another MMO has entered the market that has pulled people away with definite game play that was better at the time and losing 8% of your subscribers in 6 months after a new expansion with no real competition.

You keep saying "no real competition." This is manifestly false. The market is nearly as large as it has ever been. MMOs compete. WoW just tends to win.

Next week, we'll get to see the 3rd quarter results for Activision-Blizzard and we'll see what the subscriber loss looks like then (but looking at how Blizzard was reacting during Blizzcon, it's going to be bad).

We'll see what happens. But I'll tell you this: No matter how bad it is, it's going to still be a historically unprecedented number for a 7 year old MMO.

-Jester

[Lissa]

Aion has been around for longer than WoW's decline. WoW was still on a slight increase when Aion came into the picture. And if anything, Aion more likely has affected FF12 and 14 more than WoW where those two (FF12 and 14) had a primarily Asian subscriber base. Also, did you bother to note that Aion has lost over 1 million subs since it's peak in late 2009/early 2010?

We agree players are leaving the market. The overall numbers are down by about a million. But the entrance of Rift into the market is increasing, not decreasing the total picture, because it had zero players prior to 2011. It is "down" relative to its peak, but still a net gain of half a million players that had to come from somewhere. Most weren't from outside the MMO market, because the market has shrunk by a million. Hence, WoW looks to be a prime candidate.

Aion's decline from 4 to 3 million does not necessarily mean WoW players aren't moving to it. It could be (for instance) that Aion players are leaving the market entirely, but WoW players are giving Aion a try. There are plenty of permutations, and these subscription figures are just aggregates - they don't show us inter-game flows.

Regardless, this is all beside the big point, which is that WoW is not experiencing any historically unprecedented decline. Not in speed, not in scale, not even in absolute numbers. If people are leaving, that's to be expected, because the game is a full seven years old. What is remarkable is not the speed of their departure, which is not yet very impressive, but rather the length of their endurance. What other 7 year old game has remained on top of its genre? Has that ever happened? Even once?

I think you're not looking at the data in the proper light. You throw out the data points, then failed to properly analyze those data points trying to point that when various MMOs lost people, it was after their peak by more than two years.

Hunh? Show me where, because I'm starting to wonder if you're looking at the data at all... most MMOs have big declines very quickly after their peaks, because most MMOs are flash-in-the-pan games that fail to compete with WoW. Warhammer. Age of Conan. Rift. Lord of the Rings. Even Aion, although even after peaking and falling, it's still the 2nd largest ever. Even longer-running games, like EQ, Lineage, Final Fantasy XI and Ultima Online had large, single-year drops of over 20%, directly from their top "plateau" levels.

So, what you're saying fits... no games. Can you name me even a single game that bled to death, a few % at a time, over multiple years? I can't. Lineage is the closest, and we've already been over those numbers.

There's a huge difference in losing 30% two years after you peak because another MMO has entered the market that has pulled people away with definite game play that was better at the time and losing 8% of your subscribers in 6 months after a new expansion with no real competition.

You keep saying "no real competition." This is manifestly false. The market is nearly as large as it has ever been. MMOs compete.

Next week, we'll get to see the 3rd quarter results for Activision-Blizzard and we'll see what the subscriber loss looks like then (but looking at how Blizzard was reacting during Blizzcon, it's going to be bad).

We'll see what happens. But I'll tell you this: No matter how bad it is, it's going to still be a historically unprecedented number for a 7 year old MMO.

-Jester

Really Jester, did you at all bother to actually look and analyze the data you pulled up off of MMO.net?

Here's the 1 Million+ subscribers ranging from 1998 to mid-year 2011



Here's the 150k+ to 1 MIllion subs ranging from 1998 to mid-year 2011



Now, sit down and actually analyze the data.

Every single MMO out there with 150k+ subscribers has lost subs in 2011 except Eve and Dofus. And the number of gained subscribers in both Eve and Dofus do not account for the loss of subs in Aion nor WoW (and Rift is losing subs, not gaining them). If WoW was losing subs because of competition, why have they lost so many (almost 1 Million) in the 6 months following the release of Cataclysm if it were really due to competition?

Come on Jester, I know you can analyze way better than you have been in this post so far. There is no good reason to see why WoW has lost 800k subscribers when every MMO out there has been losing subs since right around June of this year with the exceptions of Eve and Dofus (which don't account for those lost subs, and again, look at Rifts, it jumped to 500k at it's launch or shortly after, but has already lost 100k before June hit).

Look at the data again Jester, look at how Blizzard reacted at Blizzcon, they're losing subs and they have no real competition to blame for those losses.

[Jester]

[quote='Lissa' pid='190818' dateline='1319744036']
[quote]Now, sit down and actually analyze the data.[/quote]

Yes, let's.

[quote]Every single MMO out there with 150k+ subscribers has lost subs in 2011 except Eve and Dofus. And the number of gained subscribers in both Eve and Dofus do not account for the loss of subs in Aion nor WoW (and Rift is losing subs, not gaining them). If WoW was losing subs because of competition, why have they lost so many (almost 1 Million) in the 6 months following the release of Cataclysm if it were really due to competition?[/quote]

Your argument is nonsense when applied to Rift. You say it "lost" subscribers, but that's silly - Rift only came into existence in 2011. So obviously, its numbers must either be added to the market share (unlikely, because it declined in 2011), or coming from some other game. What game is that? Maybe we should go look at the threads on the Lounge, which tell us that at least some WoW players we all know and love went to play Rift for awhile. Does that not seem a likely source of bleed?

And don't count Aion out. 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.

Nobody is arguing that this is exclusively due to competition. Bolty, TD, and others have all suggested the obvious argument: WoW is getting old and boring. Seven years is an awful long time. Some of that 1 million decline are surely WoW players leaving the MMO market entirely. But not all of them - that would imply no other MMO is losing subscribers, when, as you rightly point out, almost all of them are.

[quote]Come on Jester, I know you can analyze way better than you have been in this post so far. There is no good reason to see why WoW has lost 800k subscribers when every MMO out there has been losing subs since right around June of this year with the exceptions of Eve and Dofus (which don't account for those lost subs, and again, look at Rifts, it jumped to 500k at it's launch or shortly after, but has already lost 100k before June hit). [/quote]

WoW has lost 800,000 subscribers since mid-2010, not since mid-2011. The overall market has been declining since the beginning of 2011. Rift began competing in March 2011, when it launched, so that should affect the late 2011 figures. That's half a million entrants into the arena, some of whom we *know* came from WoW, because they're here on the forum.

[quote]Look at the data again Jester, look at how Blizzard reacted at Blizzcon, they're losing subs and they have no real competition to blame for those losses.
[/quote]

There is no law saying Blizzard's subs should remain fixed. Indeed, what they have already accomplished is an amazing feat of "defying gravity" - an MMO that retains a colossal subscriber base for seven whole years. The usual lifespan of a game, even an MMO, is a fraction of that length. Losing subscribers after a long time is a perfectly normal thing for a game.

Indeed, one of the major mechanisms by which this happens, is only too obvious from this thread: Novelty wears off, boredom sets in, and expectations rise to unsustainable levels. WoW can't keep its head above water forever, no matter how good their design is. Video games are not eternal. What we are saying, is that this is a natural, slow death that the game is dying. What you seem to be saying is that there was a Cataclysm Cataclysm, and that the stats show it. There wasn't, and they don't.

-Jester