An article posted on curse.com today confirmed what many people have suspected, Cataclysm is causing the population to decline. According to Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard, sub numbers were down about 5% (~600,000) by the end of March. Morhaime went on to say that "subscriber levels have decreased faster than previous expansions."

The full text of the article can be found at http://www.curse.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-news/956087.aspx

5% is a considerable amount too. I wonder if Blizz will see a further decline as the summer opens up and people start going outside more often. Im also curious if any of the new changes in April and now in May will stop/reverse the attrition.

 

-----signature-----

What I find funny is his sugar coating why numbers have dropped

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.


Most of us know they pi**ed off alot of there casual user base and forced em out until they change that they will continue to lose subs.Rift put a small dent in em if SWKOTOR is even 75% of the game its hoped to be it will tear a huge chunk into those numbers along with GW2 and even Terra.

Burned the F out.

 

-----signature-----

Well, such drastic changes like the ones that Cataclysm made are rarely good things for games.

They revamped every class, changed their talent trees, therefore unbalancing previous balancing done.

Late BC/Wrath started to dumb this game down to a point that the old and new players got used to it. Then they decided to ramp up the difficulty of the game again, or at least try to. I personally liked Blizzard trying to add some difficulty back into the game. But I'm sure a large chunk of the players that joined late BC/Wrath found it "too hard" or don't like their games to be a challenge at all.

I loved this game in Vanilla and eary/mid BC, was great. I still play, but it's not what it used to be. They've dumbed it down too much. It seems like they concentrate too much on trying to add the next big thing, rather than fix a lot of the problems the game already has as well.

That's the gaming industry I suppose. Your game can't last forever. Not that WoW's anywhere near death, but they need to stop with the sh!tty decisions.

 

-----signature-----

Interesting. My six-month sub hasn't expired yet, as have some of my long-term guildmates who were on 3-month subs when we all decided to get out.

I think there's still some ways to go. But the good news - this is a message that Blizz'll hear loud and clear.

 

-----signature-----

600K subs works out to about $9M a month or more than $100M per year. In other words, all the big money made on the Cat expac purchases have been pissed away in less than 6 months.

The sin? They forgot the fun. At the end of the day, it's just a damn game. If a player can't progress, they get frustrated. It's not a bad idea to make it harder, but it's all about the balance.

 

-----signature-----

i think they need to pay more attention to character progression and depth. right now all that happens is everything gets recycled each expansion...all they essentially do is drop everyone 5-10 levels under cap again.

i'm really not sure how to explain what i mean i suppose. but simply bumping the level cap and item levels each expansion doesn't seem like it can keep things interesting over the long term. plus the way they like to redesign everything constantly is a frustration to the playerbase. people don't like to work hard at something only to have it changed with a patch or expansion and take what they enjoyed and worked for out of the equation.

this expansion needs to be a wake up call for them to better plan out where they want to take this game and how they're going to do it. if they just keep blindly stumbling ahead without a concrete plan and goal the decline is just going to continue. i think the success of the game has led them to be careless and its starting to show. the real question now is can they recognize that for what it is and take the right steps to turn things around.

 

-----signature-----

If 6 million subs are in China, and they are still on Lich King, (and presumably not "burning through 'expansion' content at a rapid rate"...)

Then the loss is in Europe, The Americas, Australia, and Southeast Asia.

600,000 of those 6 million is 10% of Cataclysm players.

And that is from December to the end of March, which still leaves April and 10 days in May to be accounted for.

 

-----signature-----

When I looked at the article my first impression of the picture is that is a major Rift going on.

Besides that though the idea of content consumption is not new it is like eating a steak in that you eat until it is done but leave the grizzle behind. Cat end game is nothing but grizzle.