WoW Subscriber Levels Fall to 11.4 Million

During the recent Activision Blizzard earnings call, Blizzard Entertainment CEO Mike Morhaime mentioned that World of Warcraft subscriber levels had fallen to 11.4 million this March from its former peak of 12 million. In response, he said that Blizzard is currently looking at ways to reduce downtime between expansions.

The dip in subscription numbers shouldn't come as too much of a surprise with the March launch of Rift and the absence of a major WoW patch at that time. It's safe to say that the playerbase will continue to fluxuate, especially if Blizzard is able to churn out more content.

What do you think? You can discuss the topic in this thread in our WoW general forum.

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yeah WoW got old...
# May 11 2011 at 4:25 PM Rating: Good
there is only so much re-aranging deck chairs on the titanic, before the rats start deserting the ship.

WoW's basics hasn't really changed that much since vanilla, if you look at it: new scenery, + a few levels, stat creep. end of expansion loot pinata (until new xpac greens blows ya shiny purplz outta the water)

that's the reason i bailed on it not long before cata came out - couldn't stand the treadmill anymore - it just wasn't that much fun.

mind you, real life started getting way more fun so that was a personal wake up call lol
OLD
# May 11 2011 at 12:35 PM Rating: Decent
WoW's just old... really old.

All it has done over the course of its life is take classic MMO features to the limits using a base technology that's nearly a decade old. Each expansion merely builds on the same concept of:

(New Zone) -> (X levels and skills) -> (slight tweeks to graphics engine) -> wait 1.5 years, repeat

MMO's that are coming out now and in the future all offer new features (or gimmicks) that WoW, for the first time, can't easily duplicate with a simple patch or even an expansion.
Maybe its because...
# May 11 2011 at 10:47 AM Rating: Default
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There is a HUGE skill gap in content. Now even heroics are facerollable. That leaves skilled players with two options... raiding or competitive pvp. At least at the very beginning of Cata the heroics were tough and skilled players had some, even if it was miniscule, reasons to do more than just aggro+aoe.

Only thing keeping me in WoW right now is my friends. If they left I'd leave too.
reason for players leaving IMO
# May 11 2011 at 5:20 AM Rating: Good
well not sure theres an absolute reason but heres my 2 cents. Ive played lots of mmos and wow is right up there, to me progession is it and if wow could somehow make a raid queue so that people can raid like all the good guilds would help i missed out on a lot of raid content because of raid times if there where dungeon raid queues even if its pug people would learn, some of the cata heroics are hard to pick up on right away but even so lots of people dont want to take the time to teach you. and another note thers lots of compitition out there.
meh
# May 10 2011 at 9:12 PM Rating: Decent
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Or it could just be they pissed everybody off with Cata with all the nerfs. That is the reason I quit.
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meh
# May 18 2011 at 11:18 PM Rating: Decent
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267 posts
Exactly. I also quit when cata came out (well actually between the sundering and cata). Our guild disbanded at the same time since the majority of our guild's leadership were quitting. It was a levelling guild and levelling has become so easy that the guild was pretty redundant - and no longer much fun in the opinion of many guildies. Pretty much a race to get to max level that should be as quick as possible in the opinion of the developers. A means to an end rather than an enjoyable part of the game in itself.

For me the most fun part of the game was always exploring and levelling. Now levelling is a joke. I used to think twice about taking on more than a couple of mobs at a time while levelling a toon. Now you can take on 6-7 without breaking a sweat, and that's after removing heirloom gear. I levelled a new toon to level 70 in a few days and only died once. Ludicrous. You don't want it to be too hard but you want it to be at least challenging enough to hold interest. With all the over-use of phasing there's no longer any sense of being able to explore and area and do quests at your leisure. You go in to a new zone and there's only 1 or 2 quests available. You're pretty much hand held through the zone since you can only do most quests in a certain order and progress in an area in a certain order. Sure the new quests are innovative in many ways and certainly entertaining, but if I want passive entertainment that requires little effort I'll watch a movie. Not invest hours in a game. I guess the game's largely been ruined by so many players expecting everything now. Easy epics. Easy achievements. Easy vanity rewards. I never used to expect the same rewards that the top raiding guilds got.

It seems the only part of the game that's still challenging is pvp which I only ever did casually, and raiding which I also only ever did casually (and even raiding/heroics are pretty much facerolls unless you're doing hardmodes.
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