World of Warcraft subscription decline “makes sense” says lead dev. PC is “re-emerging”

PC Gamer writes: "Tom Chilton, lead developer on life-altering MMO, World of Warcraft, has been speaking to us about the recent dip in World of Warcraft’s playerbase and the value of PC as a gaming platform.

Tom says that PCs are on the up, and that the “big spike” and “bigger dip” in player numbers post-Cataclysm is not a cause for concern. This is good news for everyone.

“In a lot of ways I see the PC as potentially a re-emerging sort of platform,” says Tom. “I think that the PC has always offered ways to approach games that you can’t necessarily approach on console, even if it’s just because of UI restraints.”

[StayStatic]

“I think that combined with the digital distribution in a lot of ways has the potential to me to make the PC a really strong gaming platform going into the future,”

Hell yerrr it does :), i know a lot of peeps who quit WoW and just went Steam heavy with their gaming , can't wait for Dota 2 and BF3 to hit PC gonna be booming :D

[dark-hollow]

Hmmm.....
An once famous game that has millions of millions of online players is now declining because they didn't change their core formula and it's now too repetitive.

I think the same will happen to a famous "shooter" in the future....

[joab777]

Pc has a golden window of about 18 months before next gen consoles release. Then consoles will dominate again but not as much. Depending on what consoles do or offer (ie. Virtual reality) their dominance may b short lived. Eventually there will b a merging because tech is moving too fast. If sony or microsoft r smart, they will co opt the pc right now. The problem microsoft has is that they wont b able to sell hardware upgrades for 200% above similar pc upgrades unless the xbox offers something astounding that pcs don't. But consoles always have the advantage of being an single home for gamers.

[NYC_Gamer]

The game is years old people wanna move on

[Apotheosize]

I think this is probably true, I mean how long can a person play the same game for? At some point in time you just say alright you know I think im finally done

[Sarcasmology]

The reemergence of PC gaming isn't the cause of WoW decline. Boring, repetitive game-play is.

Seriously...what did Cataclysm add to the regular formula? Climbing trees with on screen buttons? MIND BLOWING!!!!

[DirtyLary]

And the rumored playable panda bears coming down the pipe? This game is not the same.

[Too_many_games]

i enjoy throwing Baby bears off a tree!

[TheGameMan]

yet wow still has 11 million people paying $15 a month to play an 8 year old game and makes more money in a month or two than 95% of all other games released this year, last year, the year before or next will in their entire lifecycles, so, i think they are doing ok!

[ChrisW]

I would love to see how many zombies would come crawling out of their bedrooms if all of the servers and cloud storage banks suddenly went kaput and all client information was eternally lost...

[majiebeast]

Game went downhill after vanilla the best time i had in wow then tried tbc it was horrible so i quit.

[kaveti6616]

Blizzard is already developing their next full-fledged MMO, so I doubt that they are concerned that the WoW franchise is finally showing a sign of decline.

[Spinal]

What people dont seem to get is that the game had to decline at some point please name a game that continuosly over the years kept rising in paid monthly subscriptions?

That said, wow is still the best mmo on the market an yep ive tried the others. Im lookin forward to Guild Wars 2 an games like BF3, Diablo 3.