World of Warcraft Loses 800,000 Subscribers, What Does This Mean for the MMO Giant?

Despite the brief rise in subscribers at the beginning of this year, it appears that World of Warcraft is once again on a downward trend. Yesterday, Activision Blizzard announced that World of Warcraft has lost about 800,000 subscribers in the company's quarterly earnings report. Is this a sign of an inevitable end for WoW in the near future?

[Hellsvacancy]

Bring it to consoles, or is that a bad idea? i'd play it

[Snookies12]

I would so dig that, even though I have a gaming PC that's more than capable of running it.

[awi5951]

It's not dead this happens everytime blizzard doesnt realease a expansion for one year. Mists of pandaria had been out a whole year and people are bored. They will come back in the winter win Warlords comes out.

[Retroman]

maybe gamers done with MMO 800,000 is alot to lose . will FPS be next?? 7 years along time playing same title over an over an over an over .

[Magicite]

I havent played this game for about a 1,5 years, but nevertheless I will buy next expansion and try it out. Lets see if it can hold me longer than 1-2 months.

Wow peaked to 12m somewhere at cataclysm launch, afterwards it went down and down and down...

BTW 6.8m is lowest numbers of subs since original(vanilla) WOW.

[Raf1k1]

It's pretty low for WoW but as an MMO in general I think it's still pretty much the highest number of subs for anything in it's genre.

[aquamala]

Activision still made 195 million on WoW just last quarter, that's more than their PS4,XB1,WiiU revenue combined.

page 40
http://investor.activision....

[Snookies12]

If you consider they're making $15 dollars per subscriber per month... Yeah, it adds up to a ton of money.

[camel_toad]

I feel sorry for the individuals that are still having to work on it. Creatively speaking they must be DYING to work on something new.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

All it means is wait until the next expansion.

[Bonkerz]

This topic is so stupid, i truly cannot understand how some of you dont not see that WOW hasnt had anything new in over about a year. It is like this at the end of EVERY single expansion, and it always jumps right back up when the next xpac launches.

[CrowGoblin]

Anyone remember they said if Everquest 1 reached 1 million subscribers that would be it's ceiling, nobody else would play an MMO?

Now 10 years on, WOW still has 7 million subscribed !!

[Shad0wRunner]

That's 800,000 people who jumped ship to FFXIV. LOL.

[awi5951]

No they went to wildstar, wildstar's numbers are good right now wow fans hate FF online. My whole clan left FF to play wow when it released because FF online was so bad.

[Shad0wRunner]

@awi5159 - IDK bout that. We have a LOT of WoW players on FFXIV. Maybe not 800,000...I was jokingly exaggerating on that. But Im sure a good percentage did leave WoW for FFXIV.

@Peekayboo - That's not entirely true. Theres a large portion of PC players who play FFXIV. Theyre not ALL fanboys.

[Peekayboo]

FFXIV was and still is a console mmo, on pc its just a fanboy game

[awi5951]

I doubt any of the raiders from wow went to FF that's a major downgrade. They went to wildstar were even the 5 mans kick your ass. The biggest complaint against wow from old players is that it is too easy now. So im sure those guys went to wildstar. Because everyone is saying its like vanilla WOW.

[Shad0wRunner]

Major downgrade? LOL, no. You probably havent played FFXIV and therefore have no perspective on the gameplay and difficulty. I have been playing it, since launch. I've also played WoW. FFXIV may not be as big as WoW...yet. But given enough time, it will get there. It's already got over 2 million subs, and growing.

Im confident FFXIV will hold it's own against WoW. It's not just some knock-off clone, wannabe MMO. WoW elitists may be laughing...but they'd be smart to keep an eye on FFXIV. It's coming up pretty fast.

[awi5951]

Well i didnt play the new one because it was so bad they had to shut it down and start over. And after FF 11 i couldnt care less about them after that game the hell with any others. I played countless MMO's and they all fall short of WOW. Wildstar I played that and i can see the appeal but anything made by Turbine i think will fail in the longrun all the games made by them or in the engine just look the same. But FF online will never be the market leader because i know how those games play.

[OUROSMAG]

It means nothing, because every time they release an xpac, they all come flocking bakc, even if only for a month or two.

[pandehz]

It just means 800k ppl are suffering from acute obesity and have received major spanking from their mommas.

On a serious note.

They are broke.

Just Kidding!!!

On another serious note....

[iNFAMOUZ1]

good wow is cancer to the game industry

[PaulFiend]

Classic to Burning Crusade WoW was one of the best games ever made! Then it started to fade slowly somewhere at Sunwell time I guess...

[MasterCornholio]

I stopped playing WoW when they started to give away everything to you. I dont know how to explain but before I needed to work my butt off to get anything in the game. Now its just given to you.

[awi5951]

Because people need to have a life thats why. Everyone cant live with Mommy forever. I use to hardcore raid on a server first guild. And was invited into Bloodlegion's sister guild but i couldnt do it because a game shouldn't feel like a job and that's what it felt like.

[PaulFiend]

Amen to that! I remember players wearing Tier 3 items considered Demi-gods! There was a huge gap in skill to obtain T3 and T2-T2.5.

[Doge]

With no new content since last year's major patch, it doesn't surprise me. A good chunk will definitely come back once WoD comes out.

[Jdoki]

It means they still have nearly 7million people playing / paying...

I think 'Titan' or 'Overwatch' are very far in to development, and Blizzard is keeping a lid on it until WoW subscriptions fall to a certain level... Then we'll see a huge announcement about their next MMO (although I suspect it'll be smaller scale and different focus from the traditional MMO's, like EveryQuest, WoW and all the clones).

[hairy]

About time this shit went away, original wow was fun, now it's just daily quests, playing dress up and doing your attack rotations for hours at a time. I'm surprised Zynga isn't trying to purchase it with how shady this shitty game has become

[GeddyThePolack]

Everyone realizes it still makes over a billion dollars every year on subs

[TheTowelBoy]

Lol I wouldn't worry about it it's still a juggernaut, warlords WILL bring it back, I'm sure

[Grave]

800,000 in 1 quarter? The bigger story (imho) in the article is that 5 million, or near half of its player base, have left in the past 4 years. That's not a good sign at all.