How does WoW bounce back from 3mil decline in subs?

30% of WOW players upgraded their computers in the same quarter? Also, this would be true when a new competitor launches that is suddenly playable on low-end PCs... no game like that has launched recently. WOW lost 3M subscribers in a very short amount of time with none of it related to competition. There was nothing released or updated in other games that would have caused 3M people to leave in a few months.

 

So what is your guess then?

 

it is obvious that WoD did not keep players hooked once they reached level cap. The raids are great, but for most people they only account for a few hours every week, and once you start getting all the gear, there is no reason to go back. Stuff like Garrisons also gave raid gear pretty regularly, so people were probably nearly BIS by 3 months.

But I feel the biggest problem is just that we know the system so well now, that every single part of the game feels like just a chore to do. I need to grind this many crystals, I need to do this many daily quests, grind CPs, grind this, girnd that. Everything is so systematic that the game is just a giant, unexciting spreadsheet with daily and weekly tasks that we must mindlessly complete. The entire legendary quest, this expansion and last was just a giant flowchart of stuff to grind.

WOW is not longer a game, it is just a spreadsheet and to-do list.

 

They'll have to come up with some new and awesome expansions and features, otherwise the game will become pretty stale and they won't see a subscriber increase.

 

This old news with the numbers having already gone up and down a few times since. The thing is that there was no need for a bounce back. They could have gone down over five million or more and still be thriving and profitable.

 

If every MMO had the solution to this problem, there would be a lot more historical successes over failures. There's never a surefire way to bounce back from declining sales numbers that happen organically over time. World of Warcraft is an old game by most standards. I can count on one hand the number of MMOs that have outlasted WoW, let alone those that have maintained high player counts in their own right.

The fact of the matter is that at some point, the game will just die. Bad development and marketing decisions that piss off the playerbase means quick death for any MMO. WoW seems to be riding on the expansion hype train. If anyone has played a game called Game Dev Tycoon, there's a feature for developing
MMOs, and at a certain point no amount of hype can keep the aging game afloat; making the only path for success available into pumping out regular expansions to boost sales, the same is true in the real world. The trap in this approach comes when a developer starts rushing out small successive changes, but loses sight of a grander vision for their game. Eve Online recently shifted to a 6-week patch cycle, down from the 6-month cycle of previous expansions. And some players are genuinely worried about that for the game. Now, I don't think WoW can pull that off, the game is simply too used to it's more traditional development cycle for that.

It boils down to the fact that no matter how many times a game gets new content, it's still mostly the same game. You can only create new versions of the same mechanics so many times before people lose interest. And I think that within 3-4 years, we'll see something drastic happen for the game to counteract it's aging and loss in popularity.

 

Well the expansions bring back a fair few subs but I don't think that anything they do will be enough to re-vitalize the game. It's dying a slow death and no matter what Blizzard do unless it goes free to play it will lose its entire player base in the near future.

 

There are still lots of subscribers and this kind of pay wall keeps the community intact, in my opinion.

Some major overhaul, literally turning this game into a WoW 2.0 (unlike the WoD that was promised to be just like that) could make the game more relevant than ever. It's all up to Blizzard, maybe they have some lifespan planned for it and simply want it to die naturally in the future so they will be able to release the sequel, or something.

 

Lmao, they recover it by letting the damn thing die and then in a few years release a brand new completely revamped game like it, must be hard to just be upgrading on such an old shit game. Would be better to work with a better model.

 

They can do that, but I doubt it. A lot of people are attached to their character and would not feel like starting over. many people are paying the $15/month out of momentum.. .. if you give people a clean break, they are very likely not to come back.

Also, it is very unlikely WOW could strike lightning twice. There were a ton of events that all came together at the same time that caused WOW to be so popular, and ironically one of them was when EQ did exactly what you suggested WOW do.. they made EQ2 and a lot of people did not want to jump over. If Blizzard did WOW2, a lot of the people from WOW would go to another game, especially with all the smaller world games coming out.

 

The lore that caught the interest of a lot of WoW players seemed to die with the Lich King at the end of Wrath . I know this isn't the major reason for the decline, but it certainly doesn't help when all Blizzard does now is re-hash old content. The story hasn't had a clear or plausible direction for a long time now.

 

Listen to the community. Fix what is broken before adding new content. Personally, it begins with PvP. I know balancing isn't an easy task, but I have no motivation to play when everyone rolls Alliance/Human (not everyone, but you understand). I love Horde. I love PvPing on the Horde side. I just wish we had the allure of the Alliance. My entire guild switched to Alliance last season. I tried, but just couldn't get into it.