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WoW has been one of the mainstays of PC gaming for a long time, consistently giving millions of people around the world a universe to escape into to fight, level, raid and explore. That's still the case over 10 years after its release, but following the spike of returning players after an expansion, there's always a drop off a short while later, which it what the game is seeing now. Following on from a return to prominence after the release of Warlords of Draenor, the game's numbers have now fallen to their lowest point since 2005.
Announced during the latest Blizzard earnings call, only 5.3 million people are now actively playing (or at least paying to access) World of Warcraft. That's down from just over seven million back in May, and more than 10 million at the end of last year.
The reason for this downturn, Blizzard claims rather optimistically, is that it's cannibalised its own audience by providing Diablo III as a some-what free to play experience in many eastern parts of the world. However PCGamesN believes the popularisation of MOBAs in country's like China must be having an impact too.
I'm not quite sure why these guys are celebrating the fact. Maybe they like having the extra server space?
However, Blizzard believes this is just temporary. With the Warcraft movie currently in development, it believes that old subscribers will be tempted back and new players encouraged to sign up after they're exposed to the rich lore of the world. There's also another expansion in the works, which historically have always led to a few million people re-subbing, at least for a while.
Despite all of the problems with WoW's player numbers however, Blizzard's revenue was up by more than 20 per cent thanks to the strength of Hearthstone, which continues to be a big earner, and the growing audience for Heroes of the Storm.
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KitGuru Says: It will be a sad day if WoW is finally shuttered at some point in the future. Fortunately for those that love it, there's still enough people around that want to adventure around Azeroth that that seems unlikely to happen for some time yet.
Maybe once it dies they can make a decent Warcraft RTS again. Wouldn’t that be nice.
I’d rather have a Starcraft MMO
WoW is great game and world but Blizzard had done a big mistake – it is too small from start. I think they should build it 10 times bigger, add more landscapes, mobs and more races. They shouldnt change so much mechanical for over 10 years.
I think they will be loosing players until they do a game model – Free2Play.
Please don’t give them ideas… WoW with different skins and textures would just go to waste another IP on an MMO.
Considering that until recently Warcraft has been pretty much stagnant as an IP whilst it’s spent it’s time as an MMO. Can’t wasting good ideas on other games based on the IP when it could shoehorned in to your MMO.
I’d like a Starcraft MMO as well :p i mean really since Starcraft 2 will finally be complete with the final expansion this year, they will have to use the Starcraft ip somehow. Warcraft still has hearthstone, WoW and the movie. WoW will probably drop to 1m subs by 2020 and end.
I remember when Cybernet was reviewing Warcraft 3, they criticised Blizzard for taking too long to deliver the sequel to W2 and one of the closing thoughts was: “…hopefully, it won’t take them another 7 years to release a sequel.”
Haha, little did they know.
When you put in a system to let people use in game money to purchase time for your game of course the sub numbers are going to drop. I havent played wow for well over a year now and have enough gold to pay for a over year of time.
“Blizzard believes this is just temporary. With the Warcraft movie
currently in development, it believes that old subscribers will be
tempted back and new players encouraged to sign up after they’re exposed
to the rich lore of the world”
That’s funny. They think a movie will bring people back to a game that has content in the name of “garrisons” and “selfies”? They think people will want to play an MMO that they currently aren’t interested in after seeing a movie with little to do with the actual game???
Nothing wrong with the size of the game. It’s the failure of content delivery that’s the problem. That and the game is extremely dated with extremely old gameplay systems. Newer MMOs that release with better models are starting to take control of the market.
They just left things unbalanced and unfinished.. Alterac Valley was rebalanced to give the alliance a head start and it was decided it was overkill and it has remained that way since Wrath. Thats just one little grievance of hundreds that bother every player and eventually they become the experience of the game. Players don’t gradually quit, they leave once they can’t play anymore out of disappointment and frustration.