About WoW Sub Numbers..

[@christopherhall619]

Editors missed a chance to say these stats changed my life

[@theturtle8949]

Or "so i have seen the new WoW data"

[@WDB662]

Damn had this exact comment in mind, beat me to it sir

[@Isabella.Koerner]

This KZbin comment changed my life.

[@gamezonereactions8388]

Who's to say these numbers aren't inflated? Corporations use funny numbers all the time. I've lost my trust in Blizzard and Microsoft a very long time ago.

[@keyanklupacs6333]

@@gamezonereactions8388 Because if anything they would be saying it was lower to preserve their pride in retail not being a dog shit game.

[@punch4freedom]

a couple years back i was staying over at a friends place and saw his dad (50+) play some wow on his pc, i think it was midway through legion, so like tomb of sargeras raid, and he was casually strolling through pandaria level 103 or smth, mobs all gray, and just looked at stuff, did some quests went into a dungeon by himself, to die getting blown off, continuing elsewhere, and once i had seen that i fully believed that theres probably an exorbitant amount of people playing the game this way, never seeing actual content during an expansion that just go around and do their own sht or enjoy the world with what little time they have

[@ilbgentyl]

Arguably their the ones having the most fun

[@greschbandicoot8817]

been playing on and off since 2008 and never done a single raid or seen any endgame content. never got bored though

[@hair4571]

​@@greschbandicoot8817 hey same

[@synns6898]

For me that is the only reason I play modern era, I just like getting gear from old raids that I just solo.

[@Grick__rimes]

I've been sub since vanilla but spent all three of the artifact and legendary xpacs only farming mounts from old content Kinda came back for dragonflight but I'm back in heroic raids this xpac Still fucking dispise the mythic+ meta tho so delves are my favorite part....can gear solo to take on raids

[@purpirek]

When I was younger I was hoping the goblins would make like a roller coaster type of way of traveling instead of gryphons

[@N3mdraz]

Have you ever posted that idea to blizzard? Would have sounded fun

[@zzygyy]

Ogrimar could use that.

[@lastelite3967]

They did.. it’s in Azshara

[@86Corvus]

How does he not know this?

[@aightm8]

More trams and trains

[@shirohige291]

As a 1990 born who grew up playing Diablo 2, WC3 and started Vanilla at 15yo, playing WoW until 2010 during its prime, I feel bad for the younglings who never were able to see what gaming and gaming companies were like during the golden era until 2013ish.

[@TheRobochicken5494]

relax boomer, there are plenty of good games out there

[@thescatterpiratesquarepant7935]

​@@TheRobochicken5494Name some?

[@richardhambel648]

It's crazy comparing the number and quality and variety of games that came out back then compared to recent years. We still get great games today, but it doesn't even compare to the 2000s.

[@awokensheep588]

@@TheRobochicken5494 he's a millennial...

[@TheRobochicken5494]

​@@thescatterpiratesquarepant7935 palword, helldivers 2, lies of p, elden ring, all the dark souls, cyberpunk, the witcher series, last epoch, poe, the finals, risk of rain ... just to name a few

[@bsavagestudios]

WOW died when my 14 day free trial ended 20 years ago Edit: For people that are confused by my comment, it's not that I didn't enjoy the game or anything... It was that asking your parents to use their credit card every month to play a video game online was a tough ask back then...

[@6789uiop]

lol, love that. I gambled in a casino 20 years ago, got $20 up, and quit. I'm top 10% lifetime!

[@vanillakush1337]

,😂👏

[@farble1670]

So you played a game 20 years ago and didn't like it? Interesting.

[@phenel]

game wasn't out 20 years ago.

[@zlet]

Up until about 7-10 years ago the game had more life than you.

[@bedrosianbaol8930]

A) "Hey Blizzard showed some data with which they say that with Legion there were 5 million subscribers and now there should be 7 million subscribers!" B) "Can they show the actual number of players online? E.g. how does Steam do it?" A) "You can play Plunderstorm!"

[@Cyrsztof]

Assuming they would show that, would sceptics like you even believe it, or just call it fake numbers?

[@H4licarnassus]

If they wanted to show how many people are playing each game at any given time they could they just don't want to. Blizzard have a bunch of stuff in their public api but player numbers/activity is not in there.

[@GeoGyf]

@@Cyrsztof Yeah, i would believe it, if they phrased it correctly. One cheap trick many MMO/Online games/Games-as-Service, use is to count characters instead of accounts, dead players as active players and so on. Maybe they paid some Indians. Fake traphic & false likes is a huge industry for 5+ years now. To buy a few likes is 0,10 cents. And its not even considered illegitimate you know, because there are real accounts that give the like (or recently bot accounts which are more on the illegal side). But Blizzard graph is pure BS honestly. Just because the China servers are dead (Netease breakup). China numbers are huge factor for any online game/service out there. These numbers CANT be regained.

[@marten5827]

Well that would really not represent how many players are online, since there are so many bots sadly..

[@thegrim_1]

Blizzard can probably show you every single time you've logged in, gone afk, used offensive language in-game, been on the character select screen, and wiped your Hot Pocket off of your keyboard. Why would you think that Blizzard programmers wouldn't be capable of the same things that Steam's programmers would do?

[@actuallyroot9663]

The fact that a 20 year old game with cartoonish animations that requires a monthly subscription to play is holding 5 million subs is actually a feat in and of itself. Think about it, the vast majority of the player base is probably in their 30’s now with careers, kids, homes, etc. And they’re still holding onto ~5 million people. Losing half your player base after 20 years is pretty normal, especially seeing that most games these days lose half their player base after a couple weeks. Say what you want about “WoW is dying/dead/whatever” but this game has easily got another decade in it.

[@BussinandDiscussin]

Prime Time TV has declined since WoW and so has WoW but to be honest WoW held up a lot better than a lot of medias did. If I was an advertiser I would try to get into WoW somehow because of its hardcore playerbase.

[@christianalanwilson434]

This is true, but I bet more than half of those subs probably aren't even active players. Only reason its that high is that Blizz is still riding down the slope of a 15 year old peak. But with an aging playerbase who are slowly leaving to other games (or literally dying) mixed with a major inability to attract new players... once the WoW generation starts checking out in higher numbers from obesity related illnesses (which is probably already happening tbh) there's no way that WoW is going to recover. And that's fine. It was a good ride while it lasted.

[@thekurtrussell4007]

@@christianalanwilson434you assume half the player base keeps getting charged 15 dollars a month and hasn’t cancelled

[@christianalanwilson434]

@@thekurtrussell4007Yep, I do. you'd be surprised how many people are forgetful/lazy enough to not bother cancelling a sub. But mostly its the people who intend to come back when they have time and never do, or they play for about a week after each expansion and then stop until the next one. I know people like this. They're not players, they're visitors.

[@thekurtrussell4007]

@@christianalanwilson434 so within the last 4 years half the players subscribed never cancelled and haven’t had their debit cards expire in that time? Like most conspiracy theories, yours is flimsy and falls apart when subjected to the slightest bit of critical thought.

[@Jbeasty1990]

Imagine how bad that chart would look without classic launches. It would be straight down since Legion.

[@maltesre9032]

Imagine the mmo genre is going down as well. thats normal

[@aaronash8571]

and even this is temporary , people will get tired of classic at the end , either wow2 is gonna save this game either SOD in my opinion.

[@GuiltyNoticer]

since MoP

[@joaofranciscohbrr]

And without the pandemic. A lot of people came back/started/kept playing because of it

[@chuggynation8275]

@@GuiltyNoticer since wrath.

[@legionofanon]

As a physician, i can say this is just a temporary rebound.

[@SuperShekky]

ty for ur service but healthcare rips off ppl. please git gud and be nice

[@legionofanon]

@@SuperShekkyLOL Im just memeing that blindfold runners moderator

[@Robert-ms2xs]

​@@SuperShekky it's a meme from the blind fold speed run debacle

[@Gudu_88]

looking forward to her comeback video

[@jackcarlisle530]

Copium

[@BrutusMaximusAurelius]

14:15 You could totally log the time spend in the different versions per sub. Should give a pretty good pie chart where sub time goes.

[@TfortLo-q8m]

No 💩

[@matthewhudson6036]

Look how slow the graph drops post Dragonflight launch compared to every other expansion, just looking prior to the blizzcon/SoD spike. Goes to show they made some very good player retention decisions, which will be good in the long run. The initial peak being low doesn't bother me much because It's understandable considering peoples sentiment with WoW at the time.

[@soysaucehairdye7869]

MoP was the last expansion I really enjoyed and that was also where the pvp peaked for me. Enhancement shaman and Demonology Warlock were so fun back then.

[@CatroiOz]

Dude remember destruction warlock being able to cast while moving ? So good

[@jestbone89]

Warlocks in MoP was the most fun I have ever had in the game.

[@leroyengels9597]

Mop all classes were fun

[@daniellacomb917]

Yup pandaria as an idea was a fucking joke and it never should have happened. Pandering horseshit, but the game itself was good compared to what it is now. Some good raids in there. Thunder king was awesome.

[@DonSox]

Wind-Walker Monk was my most played class too.

[@justkiddingmate4382]

As a physician i can tell you that world of warcraft is just suffering by bipolar disorder as you can see by the graph and will be fine when the new expansion releases again

[@gmka3920]

It suffers from naive players that buy xpac because of cool cinematic trailer, level to max and never touch the game again until next cinematic.

[@WetFarts94]

@@gmka3920that’s probably half the player base, you never truly quit wow just come back to revisit for a bit

[@gmka3920]

@@WetFarts94At some point its madness if you revisit every expansion to say its trash and quit, just let it go

[@pudgenubbins1280]

@@gmka3920 You do realize this is what happens with every live game... right? Diablo, Final Fantasy 14, BDO, Hell even Albion Online goes through these phases. Same with PoE. It isn't "suffering" at all, this is just how live games life cycles are.

[@purpirek]

@@gmka3920I guess that why the rp servers are popping right now?

[@Happywallad]

i wish people would read the bottom small text on the earnings report specifically says its about average daily users and user engagement not revenue lol

[@LuckyPed10]

I know right.. it literally mention DAUs (Daily Active Users) and its titled as "Engagement" with "Approx hours played" subtitle, It's confirmation bias ppl having that they keep try find excuses to keep on believed their own wrong belief when they see something that say otherwise.

[@ppmpyae1152]

​​@@LuckyPed10No. DAU is a footnote explaining the term used in the row below WOW. See the number '1'? The fact that it is mentioned only after WOW is weird already but when other games get players, they say 'brought back players' but WOW, again, only says 'overall performance'. And if you assume it is engagement rating measured using hours played, you are gonna have to account for bots and gold farmers. And also none of that equal to subs because grinding content can also increase hours played. I do not play WOW so I am just going with what I know.

[@LuckyPed10]

@@ppmpyae1152 The whole Table is talking about Player Time spend playing. literally the subtitle (small note under title) of the whole table, this whole section and all the info in this table is dedicated to player engagement and active playing time, so there is no way they just drop a revenue line there. as I said in my own comment to the video too, it might be overall time spend playing the game, not specifically the number of subs, legion had 12 class hall, I myself played it far more than I did in WoD, doing many alts, so that make sense, but this table 100% Certainly is not talking about Revenue, it's player's time spend playing and engagement.

[@ppmpyae1152]

@@LuckyPed10 Then its not confirmation bias like you suggested. He just didn't see the text. This actually proves his point that it is not sub count.

[@TheFloatsam]

@@ppmpyae1152 It's definately not revenue though. The "overall performance" is referencing time spent from earlier in the sentence.

[@fipabrate]

3:38 Wow, this graph looks like it was sketched out with a marker and the colored markers really give it away! It lacks the precision and polish we'd expect from an engineer's work.

[@Psiilocybe]

it really looks like it was made by an student intern or something

[@MajomHus]

Where is the drop from when they yeeted China?

[@hasaki_oce4611]

@@Degenerateslikeyoubelong That ended in Legion. Then it's been sub but still without box price.

[@dedpal]

@@hasaki_oce4611 what are you on about chinese servers existed till shadowlands or bfa

[@michaeldendulk2230]

Don't think Chinese numbers were ever included in the Blizzard stats, as it was treated as a seperate entity, run by Netease.

[@disruptive_innovator]

If they were really proud of the numbers then they'd be showing them again, every chance they could.

[@Brewnelley]

meh idk it would be kinda cringe for a company to brag about how much money its making to the players that are the ones giving it to them.

[@cobra7282]

By your logic the numbers must be pretty good since they are even willing to share this graph.

[@mummeliini123]

@@cobra7282 But there is no numbers, that's the point

[@mewre2062]

@@cobra7282 this graph doesn't show numbers, how derpy are u? to keep repeating this bs

[@cobra7282]

@@mewre2062 Look I can understand that you need information spoon fed to you and are incapable of coming up up with rational thoughts of your own, but what this chart shows is the ebs and flows in subscribers. Why would they be showing people this chart right now (with numbers or not) if they weren't secure in the way game is currently performing? Also with even a little critical thought you can surmise a fairly accurate number of subscribers just by looking at this chart. The current number maybe something more along the lines 6M subs, but it's still a lot more than most of would have guessed.

[@homeostasis1103]

I personally don't care about wow anymore, I've quit around 5 years ago with gdkp meta on classic servers and there's no reason to come back whenever there're so much games that respect your time and treat you way better than wow

[@Nagaimba]

Same. Also people who say Mythic+ is retail WoW it's maybe true but it's because of that WoW is dead now. Most people are NOT interested in grinding non stop same dungeons for 4-5 hours EACH DAY just to be accepted in OVERGEARED Raid. And you can't get in "normal" raid. People just expect you to grind out mythics for gear so you would be overlvled in gear for raids also raid being ONEMISTAKEFULLWIPE agenda is not helping. People are wanting more and more Ilvl for a NORMAL OR HEROIC raids. That means more mythic+ grind if u want to get in raid. Who the fck in their mind want that for themselves? Grind hunders of hours just to get accepted in raid in which YOU STILL WIPE FOR 4-5 HOURS BECAUSE OF ONE MISTAKE OUT OF 20 PEOPLE WIPE? WoW is a chore for last 5-7 years and we play videogames to relax in certain ways. Not to go on second job.

[@GrendalWins]

​Have you even played recently? Raiding Amirsrassil normal takes like 2 hours max and you can easily find groups for it. Also you don't need to be stacked on mythic gear to join.​ I feel like ppl like you just watch KZbin and twitch and commenting without even playing the game.@@Nagaimba

[@SERO9898]

​@@Nagaimbaare u good bro? Its very obvious that you dont even play the game, so maybe just dont talk??

[@crudolol]

You don't care so much, that you watch wow Videos and comment them. I see

[@homeostasis1103]

@@crudolol Well, exactly. I listen to some bald streamer malding over videogames/wow while reading on the way to work and back. So yeah, I don't really care

[@TEFFTPATTERN]

The idea that WoW is going to return to prominence only makes sense when you’re deep into daily community interaction with other wow players and you fall out with other things going on in the world. Once you don’t play WoW for like 2 weeks, you realize how irrelevant and niche it is pretty fast

[@leeallen5132]

WoW has always been niche, even at its most popular at 10-12 Mill. That's nothing compared to the most popular games in the world that have 100mill+. I have no idea what you mean be irrelevant though. Everything is irrelevant to people who don't play that game

[@SymplyOP]

No y axis to tell you the numbers, dont know if anything is to scale, Wrath Classic and DF released at almost the same time which isnt reflected, and we are in 2024 which this "graph" doesnt even show the year of 2023 to show the dip in subs. There is not 7m people playing.

[@majorshepard2]

Blizzard did this before. When they said they have 10 million monthly users they just took their launcher logins and not the wow logins.

[@gorilla30100]

Wrath and DF released like two months from each other, what even is this copium? WoW is doing goiod and it always has. Just because you and Asmon don't like the game doesn't mean that 7 million people don't.

[@CassidyOG]

@@gorilla30100 this game doesn't have 7mill sub. You gotta have grand delusions to believe it does rofl. In reality, subs are probably between 1/4 to 1/3 of what they're presenting here - if even that.

[@gorilla30100]

@@CassidyOG Keep ignoring the numbers and cope. WoW is doing well. Imagine making up conspiracies because a game you don't like is doing well.

[@CassidyOG]

@@gorilla30100 Ey man, you keep riding the nostalgia train. That's all that's left

[@martinwright9158]

In shadowlands I felt the biggest issue was how much of a pain swapping covenants were and just how stuck playing a certain covenant you’d be for certain portions. Played warrior loved the spear ability especially in RBGs but to complete torghast early I had use condemn. Shoulda made it switchable

[@johnmcgahey16]

Honestly my own ignorance, but what else is there to do end game other than M+ and raid? I can’t commit to a raid team with my work schedule but what I like about M+ is that I can log and push some score. So what do people usually do when they log in if they aren’t doing raid or M+?

[@GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO69]

Battlegrounds and collecting mounts, transmogs, pets.

[@TexasCoffeeBeans]

Has to degrade himself so he doesn’t get shit on for not knowing everything about the game. How sad.

[@JudnakGaming]

I started to play WoW at Dragonflight because I have nothing left to do in XIV. it's both fun I love both WoW XIV

[@wm1573]

you cant talk positively about wow in the lair of asmongold. these clowns will like or dislike things depending on asmongolds takes.

[@jointser1008]

based

[@TheBucketSkill]

@@wm1573 which is insane because wow made this fool. all these ppl are new

[@ammox4683]

25:38 Why would classic bring more revenue other than subs? WoW token was added in WotLK and store mounts started in TBC with the whole spitting emote drama, I think Blizzard confirming that Classic Vanilla doubled subs and it lining up with Bellular previous assumptions makes it pretty clear y axis is subs not revenue. I don't see how classic would double revenue like that without a cash shop you would literally have to believe that classic brought around 10million players (subs) alone in order to make that amount of money if the y axis is indeed revenue.

[@Tibainium]

I find 7+ million subs very hard to believe or Classic must be doing way better than I expected. Whenever I go to retail the zones and LFG tools always feel quite empty.

[@muumuumu]

bellular math is flawed he lacks critical information lmao

[@xpadeunholydk]

That’s probably the case in your layer or server. Try logging on to another server.

[@xpadeunholydk]

@@muumuumu do better then. Dun just talk 🤫

[@LuckyPed10]

Retail zone literally separate people into phases so there isn't too many at the same time in the same zone. Thankfully so, if i do a popular World Quest right after reset time, there is much more ppl around, even on War mode which is usually less populated and it reduce my speed to quickly finish the WQ for the Gold reward lol as for LFG tools, it's not where people play mostly so obviously it is not too popular, but main problem is there is 90% dps and 10% tank/heal. as long as you queue as tank or healer, u get a group in 5min max. i had groups found in seconds...

[@SuckF-uo2io]

Play project accession

[@henrychurch6062]

It's worth mentioning that "record post launch stability and growth" is also what Blizzard told their investors after 9.1 launched... while those numbers dropped like a stone.

[@Kraganeth]

The graph might be misleading, its just sharpie on whiteboard. so take the numbers with a bit of skepticism.

[@Soggywafflecakes]

Most of them are bots

[@DeusVultGamer]

The numbers were independently confirmed to be very close to accurate per reporting by Jez Corden at Windows Central.

[@khatogast6916]

​@Soggywafflecakes not really you have too provide a phone number for blizzard

[@Varichan]

@@khatogast6916 Even if it was true... burner phones, ever heard of them?

[@khatogast6916]

@varileztradragonsong4603 of course I thought about it but that is such a small amount compared too bots there's probably hundreds of burner phones accounts, but there's tens of thousands of bot accounts and many many more that can be made in an instant, bots like these cannot infiltrate a system that uses phones numbers or at least no where near as effective. What I said was only in reference too bots not Wether or not the data is actually misleading

[@RookMeAmadeus]

25:55 - It actually makes a kind of sense the sub fees haven't gone up. Yeah, they've been the same since 2004, but they were charging $12-15 a month at a time when $5-8 a month was normal. Almost 20 years later, everyone's started catching up to their prices. Not to mention you'd have to buy the expansions every time they came out, which cost as much as 2-3 months worth of sub time at minimum.

[@gaiusbaltar8915]

Plus you need to factor in inflation. $12 in 2004 would be worth approximately $19.85 in 2024 money based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI). But it still only costs $12 today, which would be equivalent to having charged $7.25 back in 2004. So speaking in relative worth of our money, the subscription fees went down by 39.55% when adjusted for inflation.

[@muumuumu]

50% of those stats is MTX

[@Kristoff-mq]

what is MTX?

[@PCMRvsconsole]

Yeah bots are boosting the stats.

[@traincore1955]

It's cringe people still play and spend for Blizzard in 2024

[@sslftw]

Obviously I don't know what the graph is, but I would say the bump for classic would indicate it's actually subscribers only

[@richardanthony7855]

Journalists with internal blizzards sources confirmed these numbers yesterday

[@Tobez]

The dead skin on the ball of my foot is more interesting than the Jailer was

[@casey360360]

The skin tag on the underside of my shaft is more interesting than the jailer was.

[@Tobez]

@@casey360360 exactly

[@GulagMoosefeller]

A warcraft subscription is a ticket to the theme park and a lot of subscribers just use the park to stroll through and never touch the rides. It's their replacement of "sitting in front of the TV all night flipping through 300 cable channels".

[@Jackie89000]

That's a little to real, man.

[@minabaanano]

Yeah. But why does it matter what they do. They are subbed players. The end

[@petioborisow150]

Gulagmoosefeller just applied a stack of crippling depression.

[@psylentsage]

Real

[@skywarrior00]

Well, yeah. It's a game. What else is it supposed to be but entertainment? Are you looking for a real life replacement? People will enjoy what they enjoy and not everyone cares for the kind of stress that "the rides" bring but do like the environment of the theme park. You feel this is a bad thing?

[@ThereisNoCarrollinHR]

I would argue that if you can still buy the mounts and the token now, that there is also a good chance that they would categorize them separately to accurately depict where their funds are coming from, because they'd wanna know what earns them the most money. There's not enough to prove either way though unfortunately. Another consideration is do they actually want people to know exactly how much they make off tokens and store items?

[@AD-rn1ti]

Editors keep getting me no hints to bellular until the video starts.

[@gillsejusbates6938]

weeeh

[@bigweeweehaver]

Ok?

[@tedk.6420]

​@@bigweeweehavershut up

[@ippo4502]

If the graph was in reference to revenue the doubling from bfa to classic would not be that close to exactly double, because if you're taking into account store mounts/shop item purchases the numbers would be different. I think it's more likely the graph is sub or player count, and that the possible, 2nd most likely case is it's revenue.

[@Nitroglycerin89]

I'm just glad i was a part of Legion. I had a lot of fun with that expansion.

[@mayormccheese7189]

Find it hilarious how in the community issues they stated that the fans weren't being heard but no one mentioned that was an issue to the D4 team.

[@drakthorianakatzaphquiel455]

Because nobody cares about d4.... It's like what Betamax was when we had VHS

[@RPRsChannel]

*_The first years of WoW the 3 CEO's took out $1BILLION EACH._* *_That's been the majority of their fortune. Yes, they have been paid well since, but it's those first 2 years that made them BILLIONAIRES._* *_Wow didn't cost that much to make either, I think they made back all their money first day/weekend launch. It was a very resonnable cost for an MMO. The guy who at "Hour 11" (in the last moment) that suggested it be a monthly sub; was never rewarded for that idea-this is 90% of all of Blizzard's enormous revenue._*

[@lucasferre4047]

Source?

[@N3mdraz]

@RPRsChannel I think the wow subscription is hurting the game longevity. It's another reason why people play at launch of expansion and then stop playing again. The subscription is my main reason why I don't play wow again. I don't mind buying a game but on top subscription is the deal killer.

[@rickroll9705]

they literally said in the panel it was about people playing the game

[@Marcelino1098]

So i was thinking of returning to play casually, but are addons really banned? Loved dmg meters and stuff

[@publicguy1664]

No. They are not. Asmon thinks raid/dungeon add-ons should be, and I agree, especially DPS meters, they just breed toxicity.

[@Lejoner9]

Revenue or not. Even if this chart is real this shows how bad current retail wow is. Legion has higher number than Dragonflight+Classic+WOTLK+SoD alone.

[@LuckyPed10]

It's not Revenue coz that was a table literally talking directly about DAUs, (Daily Active Users) that whole thing was directly talking about Active players and hours spend playing, so it was 100% Talking about player count or at least about how much each player was playing the game. it had nothing to do with revenue. easily to confirm if you look at the full thing or just read the table entry for other games, saying stuff like "Heartstone setting a record of DAUs (Daily Active Users) or HoTS is bringing people back" etc all about player count or active players.

[@jorgetinoco3574]

Cry more

[@ventu7907]

Legion still had Chinese players

[@rickroll9705]

Legion had china, DF has not.

[@jointser1008]

yes because Legion was actually good

[@hasaki_oce4611]

Classic (vanilla) naturally require more subs to play comfortably. The QoL is bad so we have to create it. I started classic in 2019 with 1 sub and ended up with 4. Then I returned to era in 2023 and been paying for 5 subs since then. Idk many ppl go that far, but over half the players I know on era run at least 2 accounts. You can MC yourself for rend, always have something to do while waiting for raids to start, summon yourself for safe wbuffs, port/enchant yourself. The QoL of running multiple subs is amazing.

[@derisgaming9773]

I quit for 5 years and came back halfway through Dragonflight. Been having a lot of fun with WoW again these days. I think a lot of People are just too jaded to admit they might enjoy it if they tried.

[@ValkenDnB]

Was shadowlands out before you quit?

[@Emidretrauqe]

I tried DF. I couldn't penetrate it. I spent days remaking characters and revamping the UI to fit them just for the gameplay to feel bland and repetitive. And don't even get me started on the narrative. For what little time I spent with it, I felt like I was playing a game for little babies. Babies that are expected to learn the wonders of UI optimization.

[@DEichenberg]

I am still playing, but there are certainly big issues.

[@AkiRa22084]

@@Emidretrauqe Who cares about UI? What are you talking about? Just the Dragonriding Cups are amazing and reason enough to play.

[@AkiRa22084]

@@DEichenberg Can you say what issues (I'm a developer, so quite curious)? And have you considered that those issues are just due to your taste and other people might disagree?

[@Catbot_0004]

To be fair, lots of China players played in other regions after Blizzard went offline during Shadowlands. That is a possible reason why Shadowland was not as bad as expected.

[@Elysian777]

Original classic player, I played the 'new classic' and it was booming, communities forming, people out in the world questing and helping others, guilds kickin it. Then they brought in LFR and the boost tokens. Within a couple weeks the cities in Wrath were ghostlands. BOOM seemingly overnight. No one is out leveling, questing, forming groups. The world looks and feels empty. Now on SoD and it's where classic was. No tokens, no lfr, cities full, mount parades in IF - It's all that we enjoyed original for.

[@david-ek2bo]

Bruh it has nothing to do with them adding token or RDF, people were buying gold in masses prior to that. Reason why wrath is dead is because expansion is at the end of its lifespan, people killed LK and left the game. Having RDF was actually big plus for the game as most people couldn't be arsed with forming group when they just want to casually hop in into dungeon.

[@WalkthroughHorde]

​@@david-ek2bodid you play wrath? It died around ulduar lol

[@Theaimanifesto]

annoncing cata is a big reason why wrath died thus everyone didnt bother to play and who wanted to play wrath seriously moved to warmane because their progress wont get invalidated @@WalkthroughHorde

[@david-ek2bo]

@@WalkthroughHorde just because you stopped playing after UD it does not mean it died. Every patch dalaran was packed, arena/bg were almost insta popping, same with RDF and there were 25m runs happening from 10am till late midnight.

[@theoutlander1411]

@@david-ek2bo Ironforge numbers support both Elysian and Walkthrough's line of argument and your server was probably the exception.

[@TheShalestorm]

17:01 Im not on either side of the camp here, but even by your metric, to say that 20% of an overall population Does XYZ, if you see an uptrend in the Participation. This would also highly suggest that there is in fact an increase in overall population. Unless some force has pushed the Remaining 80% into said participation. Its far more likely that the participation of Mythic plus upticks as a result of overall pop growing and thus the "20%" of the overall also grows, in a proportional fashion. In another stats scenario you could say that 7/10 kids are able to go to public schools due to income brackets. If we see a larger uptick in school attendance The first assumption with unknown knowledge should be that there has been an upticks in overall population of children rather than an uptick in attendance due to now 9/10 being able to attend. However There could have been a policy change that allowed for a lower income bracket to allow sending said children to school. In the case of wow this could very well be the returning players who may have come back for a last hoorah tour of dragonflight, the difficulty increase, or the higher Ilvl increases - causing that said mass of very casual players to get into it - but in my personal opinion i'd learn toward the more likely case of an increase in overall pop -

[@curtis9555]

Im sure blizzard wouldn't inflate those numbers at all

[@JesiAsh]

They inflate because Blizzard allows bots... so its enough for them to do nothing for numbers to rise. Especially in Classic/Discovery that is more popular than retail.

[@slick3996]

low numbers = game dead high numbers = inflated Is there any scenario where you guys will be satisfied?

[@zizouwowist1641]

no they hate themselv and they can't be happy, evrything is bad ,dont mind them bunch of emo kids@@slick3996

[@JesiAsh]

@@slick3996When they will instantly ban any bot activity instead of doing it in waves what is profitable anyway. They will never do that because they have more bots than players.

[@radoslavboyanov6511]

they ban bots in waves because when they ban most if not all of the bots at once then soon after a new wave of bots will appear so there needs to be another ban wave you realize that right? Common sense? at this point the keyboard warriors wont be satisfied with anything Blizzard does and Plunderstorm proved it @@JesiAsh

[@pallieterwow]

I still hope somehow that the cinematic is not the real cinematic and they'll releave a new one in the future

[@petioborisow150]

Bet a second one is coming a month maybe weeks before release with release date on it at the end.

[@DEichenberg]

None of these sub numbers are confirmed though? I find it hard to believe.

[@xNemesis_]

Keep that in mind, if the numbers comes from the company it self and cannot be verified by independent/journalist/analyst or you then take this with a grain of salt. We know how they manipulate data (which are easy to do) to make it look like everything is fine to their shareholders

[@nov1cegamer5]

Why people care so much about the numbers? It doesnt affect them as a player. People just want to see the company fail.

[@xNemesis_]

@@nov1cegamer5 numbers goes down, less money, less money = less incentive to care for the game in a company perspective. Less incentive = start to look for new venture. And i can do the same for the player experience, that's why some ppl care about the numbers, how hard it is for you to use that thing inside your head and see why ppl look at the numbers. Literally for every media...

[@xNemesis_]

@@Mendicant_Bias oh i believe you

[@jorgetinoco3574]

Cry more lmao

[@TheWideMurloc]

I think asmon didn’t like the war within cinematic cuz he’s preoccupied with how anduin is in the game NOW which I agree is bad. I love the cinematic though because it acknowledges that anduin is in the wrong for being a little bitch right now and has daddy thrall come by the be like “time to stop being a lil bitch and fight for your people and your world” and he’s like “fuck man you right” So it fixes the problem with anduin without completely tossing what’s already been done with him

[@richardandersson5786]

Just love how Asmon called out the sword when BFA launched and now we get to see what the point with it was

[@alex132788]

One thing this misses is that they relatively recently added the ability to "pause" your subscription instead of canceling it. If I had to guess, a paused subscription is counted as a subscriber to artificially boost the numbers. Not that I know how much impact that would actually have.

[@aaakitsune]

With graphs like that, their up for strong manipulation. You dont get to know what are the sub numbers or estimated ones. Some graphs have different value scales at the top and bottom. And we dont know how big these curves are when we dont know the roof or floor is based on these graphs.

[@bootdotdev]

The only Boots we have is our Wizard Bear mascot! Thanks for the shout out! :D

[@deanm375]

The problem with the Anduin/Thrall cinematic is nobody wants to see a hero whining like a bitch. Heroes are heroes because they have the ability to rise above their strife. When Varian was faced with his own death he didn't start crying he pushed forward and practically spit in Guldan's face . And I also hate the mobs scaling as you level. It makes leveling feel useless.

[@lazar.dilov.1]

as a physician, I think that even if they plot revenue rather tahn subscribers, although harder to track in terms of performance, it still shows that the retail dragonflight for example, sustains pretty well compared to the huge drops shortly after shadowlands s1-s2

[@mr.gamingz]

WoW only survives because of nostalgia. Thats why classic and SoD performs so good in that chart. They just try to keep the dying cow alive as long as possible.

[@therabbits69]

what's funny is both classic and SoD are basically dead on most realms I have been on and DF is going up and has more people on it every day. Which I don' wanna say is sad for classic since I love it but still.

[@CubeParrot1]

@@therabbits69 SoD is not dead, what are you on?

[@santiagobuenos9673]

@@therabbits69really weird take

[@therabbits69]

​@CubeParrot1 not really I play all 3 versions. Sod and classic everywhere I go is dead. I enjoy all versions so I am not bashing, just saying what I see. DF is popping off right now.

[@rickroll9705]

@@therabbits69 bro classic era whitemane cluster is always packed, sod literally have thousands upon thouands of players in ashenvale right now doing the portals, a singlle walk in dalaran at wotlk servers show how insane the numbers are and DF is healthy and fine as it always was.

[@MR_ARKANSAS]

i would guess the height of legion is 5.5m or less. there is a constant downward trend until classic. it's safe to assume that classic + the other versions are half of the subscriber base. i'd guess they are somewhere around 4m subs currently.

[@lovropeter9988]

Ok just make things up

[@MR_ARKANSAS]

@@lovropeter9988 you can think what you want but Bellular based his numbers off the last reported subscriber count during WoD. They were at 5.5 million players left with a full year until the release of legion. If you think they didn't lose any more subscribers for a year you are lying to yourself. Bare minimum they went down to 4.5m and it's probably way lower. if you are being generous they lost down to 4 million players and legion brought them back to 5.5 million.

[@Taegreth]

Ironically, one of the things that's keeping retail WoW from dying is the never-ending discussion about how retail WoW is dying.

[@SavagexGoon]

Game has been dead for a long time

[@volvogoodtruck1117]

@@SavagexGoon nah

[@MrTwisted003]

I was one of those points on the graph, whether sub or earnings, on that downward spiral after legions peak. Legion was fun, but I was so burnt out from WoD I just couldn't do it anymore. WoD was so bad, it ruined everything after, for me. I think the only reason I didn't quit during WoD, was the annual sub. I couldn't let the money go to waste. If I did, I don't think I would have had such a sour taste of WoW after. Classic is what brought me back. Even if I came in late. I really wanted to play through TBC and Wrath again, but didn't come back until end of Wrath Classic. I didn't even know about it until my daughter asked if I would come play again. The only Retail I have played, is 2 characters in MoP Remix to 70, and just before that I leveled one of my mains from 45 to 60 and an alt from 40 to 60, since I didn't even have Dragon Flight then. It would be nice to see actual numbers, both subs and revenue, also separated by where those players are spending their time. To me, it means a lot when a company is upfront and transparent.

[@henkweeds1498]

Wow is like a old friend where i go now and then to realize he changed

[@Killaz2ify]

does he have a playlist for that background music? It´s a mix of Skyrim and WoW but i dont wanna hear through the whole soundtracks :/

[@DRroudz4lot]

kinda strange tho to compare data from 1 game to data from 3+ games. each needs their own development team for dungeons, pvp, gear, classdesign...

[@KnurdMonkey]

IT would be crazy if they include WOW in the Microsoft Pass. that would make number of subs on Pass blow up.

[@MegaBusterDude]

i think we may now know, the real reason blizzard "cant" get rid of bots. you gotta have those inflated numbers baby! edit: not saying 6 million of them are bots, but im willing to bet a pretty penny that a good % of them are bots.

[@kaanozkuscu5079]

probably 4 m are boths, i used to but on 30 accs back then.

[@AkiRa22084]

Bots don't pay subs. I'm not sure anyway. Here in Europe we never see bots. Also, all my friends are playing, which was never the case in the past.

[@LalaDepala_00]

​@@AkiRa22084 This is honestly true. I play on Argent Dawn which is one of the biggest EU servers and I rarely see bots, if ever.

[@AkiRa22084]

@@LalaDepala_00 I saw a multiboxer once, lol. I sometimes feel that muricans are over-exaggerating the botting issue. Like how they made such fuss over multiboxing, which was irrelevant.

[@LalaDepala_00]

@@AkiRa22084 The only time I actually saw multiboxers was at the start of Shadowlands. But not many

[@Moonface00z]

Legion was the best and fun experience for me. I tested out all classes legendary item

[@Winckypoo]

Man asmon really cultivated an audience that hates the game that made him. Crazy lol

[@vidgetgaming]

Blizzard did that for him

[@blueberry5822]

I noticed its…odd

[@levimiller3196]

or hear me out… the game was bad

[@whiskbiscuit7199]

yeah I remember when he would dumpster people for being noobs, now it's all "too many buttons, too many addons" when he started sucking at the game lol

[@Kezui]

​@@whiskbiscuit7199 As he said once. Nobody cares about how skilled you are at the game when nobody is playing it.

[@David_Cerkez]

if there is soooo much players around, why my qs for BG can take up to 30 min to play, and it is not instant... ffs on private servers where there are maybe 2000-3000 people online, qs are poping more frequently (Instant) when I want to play... I do not believe that noone plays pvp, i refuse to believe that...

[@Inconspicuous657]

Do these active players include bots?

[@JesiAsh]

Do those active players include real players?

[@maagi1]

If there wouldn't be many active players it wouldn't even be worth to pay sub to bot lol

[@blueraine21]

Imagine trusting anything Blizzard says in 2024 😆

[@rickroll9705]

to have 3 million bots by passing autehnticatos they would need to make more money than blizzard to be viable. bots would hardly be more than 300k

[@666kty3]

Dude....login. There are people everywhere. Every zone. People using Chromie time in every expansion. 10 minute or less lfr ques....

[@BrodashMx]

sod numbers not retail

[@gorilla30100]

Then why do the numbers show that this WoW season is just as popular as the start of the expansion where most players are online due to the hype? That's almost unheard of, in the vast majority of games that doesn't happen ever. M+ and raid participation #'s literally show the same amount of participation as the start of the expansion before SOD was ever out. That's insane retention/engagement. You don't have to cope. Retail is very good right now, SoD is good too. It's fine to admit this.

[@OrganicJKW]

It'd be very interesting to see how many people subbed to play things like Plunderstorm and MOP Remix. There was also the closing and reopening of the Chinese servers (which comprised 60% of Classic players).

[@dumd6790]

Title of the slide is engagement with "Approx. hours played"

[@alexandreabranches]

I think the graphic is referring to subscriptions because of the impact of Classic WoW launch had in it. Considering that Classic at launch had no shop or microtransactions like modern, only subscription revenue alone wouldn’t have such impact in the graph like a bundle of mounts have in modern.

[@vidgetgaming]

The Classic>WOD graph and the Legion>DF graph both are referring to subscribers but the thing used to connect the two graphs (the investor call) is referring to revenue which makes the whole thing fall apart.

[@jesseclark2435]

I just don’t want to hear dragons, soldiers, archmages and kings crying about their feeling like sheltered Tumblr users. The gameplay treadmills could be terrible or great…I just can’t stand the half decade of cringy fail from their talentless narrative team anymore. I’m on to different worlds.

[@TrueLegendBeatz]

I gonna do the next addon Blindfolded and Pwn all the goofys.

[@user-eq2fp6jw4g]

Can you imagine people are buying this "you will own nothing" -WEF sponsored shit.

[@DefenderOfVirginity]

you vill eat ze bugs.

[@curiousfishie]

Can you please elaborate because I'm not following what you're referring to. I'm not jabbing here because I don't agree with that statement myself, but I'm just having trouble understanding where you're coming from?

[@gorilla30100]

When you go to a movie theater and buy a ticket to the movie do you complain that you should own the rights to the movie or demand that the theater give you a copy of it?

[@melissas4874]

I like keys, but I agree on the constant scaling being annoying. This is kind of similar to how Blizz writes the story though - no conclusion or ending. I think some players set their own "ending" goal where keys are concerned and it is typically based on available achievements. The devs have already implicitly admitted that retail sucks when they brought out Metzen to hype up the next 3 expansions at Blizzcon. I did resub for Hardcore and SoD, but only for like a month or 2.

[@Lagerta698]

Even if 50% of the players that left with dragonflight and the sht hole of expansion SL was they will play for a month or 2 at max and quit again. WOW has become this loop hole that no one wants to play but has to try...

[@Lambda322]

Dragonflight 10.0-10.1 Was a final for me. I got 3200 RIO, for the last time wasted 300 pulls of my life to kill mythic Rasz and just stopped. Most bosses are bland mindless M+ spam is even worse.. It's just not interesting. WoW is old and honestly outdated. No good reason to be back for 11.0 either as that feels more like another DF patch rather than expansion.

[@Lagerta698]

@@Lambda322 At this point as u say entire game is just blank and the same. Repeatable, you have to loggin just to do chores, daily, weekly and logoff. Nothing else to do and It feels empty. I am playin ESO atm and i am happy to see people running around in every zone no matter what level. WoW as Mmorpg died long ago, now its just people in one zone spamming sell survice... Wasted so much M+ keys because someone died and and another left. Noone cares if your key suffers cause Noone gives a sht

[@Hrithmus]

I was out when WoW turned into a E-sports mmorpg. Blizzard for whatever reason absolutely loves E-Sports. I just want to casually pvp and get descent gear without pre made that need a resume to join Faz_superwowboy that streams on twitch 18 hours a day.

[@robinostertag871]

asmnogold never like the dragon thingys? didnt i saw a video of him endorsing them while creating one and actually playing it with awe? dude... seems to me he gets his opinions from reddit popularity

[@Owlboi]

this mf cannot fathom the idea of an opinion changing

[@robinostertag871]

@@Owlboi Sir, i am sorry to inform you, but you cant read properly, despite the fact that you read you dont understand what was writen, i herby summon you, to check your privileges and stop reading what YOU WANT TO READ and start reading what others HAVE ACTUALLY WRITEN.

[@reakdx8692]

Shadowlands borrowed power is missing a key point but they probably didnt go into details as it was some management presentation: They tied Power to RP - a fatal mistake if you arent able to just "change glyphs" / "Change bfa essence power" and instead locking it behind a massive undo-questline; players couldnt adapt their setup to the content they played and henceforth were having to settle for a specialised or generalistic approach which either felt bad when trying to specialise at multitudes of content at the same time and wanting to be competitive. Never touch players freedom of choice - why can i change talents with one click but am stuck with a borrowed power system doesnt live up to the same flexibility?

[@pt9373]

Retail actually feels really populated to me. Can queue a world boss and have 40 people within 3 seconds, superblooms have 200+ people doing them at all times, main city is packed. I log into wrath and there's 5 people in Org. Log into SoD and you spend 35 forming a deadmines group. I think the deception is there not being much actual verbal communication in retail these days, which makes it feel more hollow and solo. Retail just has more thing to do solo (Like how you spent the last 4 years farming mog and mounts solo without talking to anyone), so it might seem less populated, but there's still a lot of people imo.

[@el_mal_de_ojo]

The War Within is one of the best cinematics in the history of the game? It actually manages to develop a key character's personality in an extremely nuanced way.

[@rtchhangte5045]

Dying or not, me and my friends are still playing the game and enjoying it.

[@gtfffv]

That Y-axis could be anything. For example it could be percent growth or decline

[@WarMonkeyPlays]

Y-axis is subscribers, confirmed in full original that clearly labels the trend as subscribers. What's up for debate is where the y axis starts at. However, it starting at zero is in line with what info we do have.

[@bersy3867]

7m - is a joke. 2022-2023 - should make huge drop without CH, BY, RU segment of players. Non of it represent on a graph. And also no information about previous Expansions, so you can't compare the number of players.

[@Kivrus]

We know data from previous expansions already lol It was public

[@фанатКуплинова-ь1е]

CIS players have always been crazy nostalgic about 3.3.5 Lack of support and ad money from the private servers exploded the number of private server streamers

[@JesiAsh]

They replaced CH, BY, RU with bots

[@cbankord]

They're sub numbers because the classic bump. Revenue wouldn't make sense for classic as there was no additional box price and no micro transactions associated with the classic server. Revenue only works as people re-subscribing in this case.

[@RanDum8]

It's pretty clear to see by that chart retail has less playerbase now than during bfa. So yeah retail is pretty dead. If you line up the releases, you see all retail releases tank each on getting less and less intial player engagement, and then the classic releases, SOD stabilising the figures. They are now at the end of the content people liked in classic aka cata, which means those figures are gonna plummet and next expac in retail is just going to see that graphic hit the floor.

[@GeoGyf]

Its also BS numbers. WoW took a really big sub drop when the China servers went down (NetEase breakup).

[@GeoGyf]

@@Degenerateslikeyoubelong Oh you sweet summer child. They were indeed counted as subs, especially for the investors. And ofcourse the players as well, but particularly the investors. They were counted as soon as the deal happened 15 years ago. If they didnt count as you say, then WoW numbers would have been surpassed by at least 10 MMOs.

[@rickroll9705]

@@Degenerateslikeyoubelong they all were counted as subs after 2016 because it went from playing for time frame to exclusively monthly sub

[@jkhee]

Don't forget that the ban multiboxing. Most of the community are basically farming in dungeons or old world areas.

[@4Wulfred]

7.5m or 750k

[@xpadeunholydk]

U r so funny u know that?

[@blueraine21]

7.5m total logins, not player count..

[@rickroll9705]

@@blueraine21 the panel was about player count not about logn nor time played lol

[@MusicIsMyAdicction]

how do you know who played SoD, Retail or HC? I mean there is a /played function and every char has his playtime saved somewhere. so you can't tell me there isn't a possibility to tell that...

[@bachirbouziri3783]

Blizzard should change the CPU games so bad 20 years and blizzard keep in developing games in the same CPU games

[@einherjar4902]

I had a literal stroke reading your comment

[@Nico_Conradie]

@@einherjar4902 🤣

[@loki.odinson]

Mythic + will never be as fun or as engaging as Savage and Ultimate raiding in Final Fantasy XIV.

[@ZoraTheExplora]

Inflated between 3 completely different games. Filled with bots. While the players that are human still left think like the bots they are trying to keep up with. All in a p2w package.

[@Gloriankithsanus]

This entertained me

[@VENAZ]

They're not letting anyone verify these numbers, it's just their say. Gaurenteed they added a few extra thusands if not "millions" to that chart to please shareholders.

[@eggs9636]

@@VENAZ i doubt they would straight up lie like that, shareholders dont fuck around and can sue you for something as serious as that, doesnt mean no one has ever lied to shareholders but I wouldnt bet on it. If anything i would wager they lied by omitting something rather than adding more numbers

[@VENAZ]

@@eggs9636 look at cs2 for at example. Wow is supposed to have x5 the player count of the most popular game on steam. And WoW can't even get a quarter of the viewers on twitch. if the sub count is 100% accurate. How many of them actually play and watch the game?

[@rasalas91]

"Historically high churn". Look at the integral of what is before that. That's pretty decent after that drop.

[@Silverhand404]

The graph doesn't show anything at all... it's just a line which estimates their relationship, not sub numbers, not even revenue.

[@Juhnu]

It shows a lot, maybe you don't just understand how it works🤷‍♂

[@lukaskonecny9992]

It literally says it represents active users.

[@Granhier]

8:12 "Didn't feel heard" Hmm, can't help but see a parallel to "GamerGate Two", wonder how long that one will take for devs to realize

[@SquirrelGamez]

The game might not be dying but the community is deader than the dinosaurs.

[@pudgenubbins1280]

It really isn't. This always happens. Near the end of the expansion the community goes elsewhere, MY guild went to FF14, I know another big guild went to BDO and other games. Then when expansion drops, they all rush back. Then at the end of the expansion, or if they finished what they wanted, they go back to said games. Rinse and repeat.

[@domehammer]

@@pudgenubbins1280 It's out of the ordinary for community to even still exist outside high pop servers. On low pop servers there isn't a community at all anymore, it died years ago.

[@pudgenubbins1280]

@@domehammer Realms dont matter anymore though. High pop servers and low pop all merge together. The only difference is RP and non-RP.

[@Phatsnake]

There is an update: Bellular confirmed these numbers with an inside source.

[@AvatarofHate]

There is no way in hell they have now millions of subscribers.

[@ForOne814]

There's no way they don't. It's literally impossible for them to have less than several millions.

[@tobi1173]

Can somebody explain the difference between Retail wow, classic wow and the latest expansion to me? I dont get it