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World of Warcraft passes 10 million subscribers
In a press release today, Blizzard Entertainment announced that WoW's total subscribers are now up over 10 million players. This comes on the wave of selling 3.3 million copies of Warlords of Draenor. This confirms vague statements issued by community managers and other Blizzard people over the last week -- that things have gotten quite busy around Azeroth.
Encrypted Text: Are rogues truly an unpopular class?
Every week or two, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Scott Helfand (@sveltekumquat) will be your shadow on this treacherous journey; try not to keep your back turned for too long, and make sure your valuables are stashed somewhere safe. It is a lament that we, the ever-beleaguered players of the ever-shunned, ever-maligned, ever-misunderstood rogue class, often turn to when we're feeling glum. Nobody plays a rogue. We're WoW's most-hated, least-popular class. We never get the changes we need, so the class just continues to decay, month after month, patch after patch, year after year. If Blizzard hates us so much, why don't they just remove the class entirely already? Monks and ferals already have all the stuff we want anyway. Nobody. Plays. A rogue. ... Right? You guys should know me well enough by now to know my answer.
World of Warcraft up to 7.8 million subscribers
According to the press release of the Activision-Blizzard earnings call taking place today, World of Warcraft has seen a rise in subscription numbers, up from 7.6 million as reported in November, to 7.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. A rise of subscriber numbers is almost to be expected following big events like BlizzCon, and big announcements like the upcoming expansion Warlords of Draenor. It's a small bump, but the number is still higher than even the 7.7 million subscribers reported in the second quarter of 2013. Subscriber numbers seem to have leveled off entirely in 2013, with the one dramatic drop for the year being the 1.3 million lost in the first quarter of 2013. With a new expansion on the horizon, a free level 90 to those that pre-order said expansion, and pre-orders set to become available soon, we may see another rise at the next earnings call. New expansions have a tendency to lure back old players, and garner the interest of new players as well. We'll have to wait and see how the game performs in 2014.
World of Warcraft down 100k subscribers to 7.6M
According to the press release of the Activision-Blizzard earnings call that will take place later today, World of Warcraft is down 100,000 subscribers to 7.6 million. This is a drop from the 7.7M reported for the second quarter of 2013. This represents a continued decline from the 12 million subscribers reached at the height of WoW's popularity in late 2010. However the most recent subscription decline is a fraction of what previous quarters have seen. For the first quarter of 2013, WoW lost 1.3M subscribers, landing at 8.3M. The second quarter of 2013 lost 600k subscribers. It would appear, at least from the limited data we have been given, that the subscriber losses are leveling off. Much of WoW's future growth and/or continued life rests upon the back of Blizzard this weekend at BlizzCon 2013, when it is expected they will announce the game's fifth expansion.
Is WoW's audience still increasing?
I'm not sure how much of this is legit, but stick with us for the information first, and then stay for the debunking. Edward Hunter over at Gamasutra decided to do some poking around in comScore's MediaMetrix application (which can track, based on a survey of a few million users, access to various applications on a computer -- which programs are run when), and he found something that surprised him: despite the economic downturn and the emergence of a few other popular MMOs recently, World of Warcraft's audience is estimated globally at 13.1 million. In other words, it's still growing from the last official numbers (11.5 million players worldwide) we heard.Now, the first issue we'd have with these numbers is the situation in China -- Hunter doesn't mention it at all, and in fact his graph (from comScore) doesn't have any dips at all in it, even though the game, and presumably its millions of players, went offline over there earlier this year. That right there throws a wrench into all of these estimations -- it's very likely comScore's information is just plain wrong.
WoW subscriber numbers still increasing, multi-boxers trivial
There has been a long thread about WoW and the philosophical changes and approaches over the past four years, and in particular to some of the larger design decisions made recently (dual specs). In it Ghostcrawler makes an offhand remark about WoW's subscriber numbers:"Wrath of the Lich King is still selling very well and our subscribers are increasing."Now I want to be clear that this was made off-hand and is not from an official earnings statement. But that doesn't discount it from being full of truthiness; and nonetheless, this is rather significant in that it's been a while since we last heard any indication of current subscriber numbers. To some this news won't be very surprising, given that Wrath of the Lich King has been a huge hit. But others might raise an eyebrow that after five months of Wrath things are still up-ticking.He also mentions the ever hot topic of multi-boxers:
World of Warcraft hits 11.5 million subscribers
It's been recently announced that the World of Warcraft has hit another milestone: a grand total of 11.5 million subscribers. This really comes as no surprise after the release of an expansion, especially one as widely hyped as Wrath of the Lich King which broke a few records of its own. I think it would be bigger news if they hadn't hit a couple of new milestones.Gamesindustry.biz has a quote from Senior VP of merchandising at GameStop Bob McKenzie, indicating that it's not just Wrath of the Lich King doing well. These numbers haven't spiked because of all of the returning customers, WoW is gaining plenty of new ones, too. The base WoW package and the World of Warcraft Battle Chest are still doing quite well. Better than last year, he specifies. So while those base package purchases are certainly fueled by the Wrath hype, it's bringing in new customers, not just the returning customers.WoW may not be the kind of game for every gamer out there, and the game isn't without its flaws. Despite that, it has proven over and over that it's by far one of the best games out there, and definitely the best of its genre. I don't expect it will be going away anytime soon.
