Report: WoW's Actual Subscriber Count & Blizz's Official Shadowlands Post-mortem

You read the title correctly: this is the data we've all been waiting for. Learn Back-end Programming: boot.dev, and check them out on Boot.dev’s KZbin: @bootdotdev! Use code BELLULAR for 25% off. Sponsored by Boot.dev. This comes from a GDC 2024 talk done by John Hight, who is the executive producer of the Warcraft franchise.

[@BellularGaming]

Learn Back-end Programming: boot.dev, and check them out on Boot.dev’s KZbin: @bootdotdev! Use code BELLULAR for 25% off. Sponsored by Boot.dev.

[@sleazysid253]

You've obviously never played on a small pop private server.

[@SlaughtingIdiots]

modern wow can never again be good, that is certain.

[@steerablechimp9194]

Will this help me program my GF's back-end?

[@samgriess438]

I have uninstalled after they launched that pirate(d) game they fired 20% of their gaming staff and clearly didnt spend much time on SoD, so im out

[@farawayranger8489]

2019 Classic Launch was something truly special to relive.

[@Ryan_hey]

2019 Classic launch nostalgia is real

[@BoomerElite4u]

I don't even think Dragonflight is that bad, but none of my friends play WoW anymore so it feels bad to log in and play by myself.

[@ub3rfr3nzy94]

eh, I've not had friends play wow since cata. Got to find a guild and make new friends on wow

[@LaXnlah]

In the same boat.

[@eleriloki6275]

It's also why I quit at the beginning of Dragonflight. The covid years decimated my guild - even our GM left. It was terrible as the only top mgmt of my guild to get anybody to do anything or even to log on. I finally quit playing but now over a year later I'm beginning to think its time to come back. I have left before (a 3-yr break) and its hard to come back after you've missed so much. I may not even have a guild anymore. But if you do the work you can catch up and WoW has made that easier than it used to be.

[@hobosnake1]

​@ub3rfr3nzy94 sometimes the experience just isn't worth the effort of finding like-minded people. WoW would be fun to me, but I have time to log in for raid and do a few dungeons. I don't want to make a whole new friend group to play WoW. I get that you need to, but why would anyone return when theur friends aren't already playing and their last memory of the game was the disappointment of shadowlands.

[@ass4sale2]

Doesn't help that most of us started wow in HS in vanilla. So now we all have kids so no longer have time to play. I'm lucky if I can raid one night a week. If I do anymore then that my wife will have a fit that I need to watch the kids.

[@LouSeph]

I LOVED Legion - the villains - the class lore - I know some didn’t I LOVED the weapons. Gave me goals. The story tied to the raids. I loved it.

[@malfuresz7351]

I LOVED teh asmon gold when he asmon godled over the golded gilded gold when finaled thfantay voet the gold asmong do the gold do the gold do the gold he will delivere do teh gold giold ogld asmongold

[@timopint1125]

came a couple years to late sadly

[@Stu98765]

Legion should have been the end of WoW. Nothing since has been anywhere near as epic.

[@sardonicspartan9343]

Legion is my favorite expansion

[@TehCheat3]

Legion was cringe tier dadrock boomer storyline with a horrible gameplay loop that has brought the game as a whole down ever since. Worst expansion the game has ever seen. It doomed the franchise.

[@BFTBGSFTST]

They need to repair the lore damage.

[@Flirt136]

Literally almost no one gives a flying crap about the "lore damage" nerd.

[@notalive_zombie]

I was just about to say, there's no more damage but someone already proved my point.

[@GX-105D]

agreed, need to go back to lich king of the lore, then go to the zones that's unfinished, and make everything functional, then i would overhaul cata content into a portal continent, leave the vanilla content alone, cut out panda, finish WoD content that should've been, leave legion as it is, rename BFA since that expansion had nothing to do with saving the world, redo the shadowlands ending and make the big bad open a portal to azeroth then enter, setting the stage for dragonflight, then have the jailer summon a undead dragon mount and fly through the portal to the dragon isles

[@jonathangodin4775]

@@Flirt136one guy who plays wow calling another who plays wow a nerd is the teapot calling the kettle black

[@Emryss1996]

alot do actually lol, dont need to be a dck to people because you dont like lore. @@Flirt136

[@Byron804]

I genuinely wouldn't have expected that many active subscribers, 7M is huge.

[@csr2120]

The breakout by region would be very interesting. Is China still half the subs?

[@LuckyPed10]

@@csr2120didn't WoW's china was fully shutdown several months ago ? I remember some of the chinese "invading" other non china servers to play wow and some people complaining... that shutdown probably bought down a big chunk of them.

[@capital_tm]

This graph seems to not represent Chinese players - as we would expect to see a massive drop that is not represented here when those servers closed.

[@Snoootz]

i really don't believe it one bit

[@ShadowsOfThePast]

Didn't take long for the doubters to arrive..

[@user-it5ps2bl7s]

Wow they actually acknowledged what they did to characters in shadowlands? I don’t think I’ll ever get over what they did to the lich king, arthas, what they turned his helm into. It’s actually disgusting. I’ll never forget that.

[@Gojimaru]

Look what they did to my boy Garrosh.

[@alihorda]

​@@Gojimaruat least he went out with a bang. Imagine if he turned good

[@cyndavi6655]

What they could do to fix Shadowlands is really cheesy but have it have been just a dream brought onto everyone through Nzoth and then change things up so Arthas is still around, etc.. and we can go from there. They won't but they should, imo. The damage SLs did was really bad to the game and I hate to say it but the person they put in charge when Metzen left did a lot of damage too with the flying debacle at the beginning of WoD.

[@borek92]

I actually like that they destroyed helm of domination.

[@alexistaylor969]

@@cyndavi6655 been telling people that since the end of BfA, even posted it into the forums many times taunting the writing team saying I wrote that off the top of my head, and that they need to change careers. Dragon flight should have started with a "hey you're finally awake" and turns out the end of BfA and all of Shadowlands was a madness induced nightmare from using N'Zoth's corruption in our equipment and he escaped during our fight and basically put us all into a comaesque fever dream.

[@shadowdragon8168]

The biggest thing I noticed from this other then the sub numbers, was that they acknowledged and knew exactly what the fuck ups of shadowlands was. That gives me some faith going forward.

[@mrgoob76]

well kotick is gone and they are owned by microsoft now.. they never would have released this under bobby

[@GravityTrash]

They knew exactly what they were AFTER the damage was done. They most certainly weren't in agreement during the expansion, and I don't expect them to change course the next time they make a colossal fuckup

[@cole8834]

"Afterlife setting wasnt accessible" has got to be a really funny case of ignorance. The problem is that they treated it like any other place to go to, just with occasional reappearances from old characters. They also clearly had massive reworks with what the Jailer was going to be before the xpac released. I wouldn't expect the GDC to really delve into actual mistakes the team made as it would be too... damning?

[@krampusthestoryteller1416]

Yeah. I actually really like the more alien settings like Outland or Deepholme. It'sall about the immersion and ways you present them to the players.

[@knifetoucher]

Dang, WoW makes $105M per month on subs alone. Not even including the store services or the new expansions.

[@WarthUnder-om8ox]

now you know why bobby got paid so much

[@Levvyy]

$105M + microtransactions that could be double/triple per month in total

[@Junebug89]

@@WarthUnder-om8ox Which is ridiculous, because wow was making massive bank long before activision and blizzard merged.

[@Swageralt]

It's not that simple. A lot of people are buying tokens with gold, which cost 20$, and a lot of people are buying a year of sub for 11$/month, also, this doesn't include regional prices, VAT, e.t.c.

[@Freestyle80]

what a dead game, asmongold said so

[@kaakrepwhatever]

I would suggest that a big reason why the world seems more dead is that there is little to do in the world. Patch content is dead within a couple of weeks. Retail seems to be designed around the idea that players should be raid or mythic+ logging, logging out until reset, and coming back in the next patch.

[@GX-105D]

the world is dead because blizz kills off the content of the world, every zone needs to be up to date to the expansion, not just a place you start out leveling, needs to be random events that constantly spawns that makews leveling and progressing ilevel interesting, instead of killing hogger in SW, maybe have dragon attacks during DF expansion

[@JC-uy9hs]

I agree world of Warcraft has some of the biggest world zones that are grossly underutilized. They could do so much with the world that they have and yet they choose to instance off most content and that is a huge mistake

[@JC-uy9hs]

We don't need new zones we need zones that are constantly in development and being developed and evolving

[@JC-uy9hs]

Give people a reason to leave the city

[@JC-uy9hs]

It can be like something zany like magical storms enrage the mobs of the area now drop enhanced lewt and double XP. Or zandalri blood troll are invading westfall and the barrens repel and push them back. Karazan is radiating magical essence and infecting the surrounding zones. There's so much they could do to utilize the zones and hope they take what they learn from plunderstorm and do that in overworld zones that could be a lot of fun

[@camsmyth101]

I still feel like I would like dracthyr more if I could choose my visage from one of the playble races. The dragon aspects got to choose theirs the human looking form just feels wrong to me , but thats my opinion.

[@Valvad0ss]

Great idea

[@Mercymurv]

yupo

[@blockedperfection9278]

Been saying this since the start, like cmon blizzard 😞

[@katrinkarose175]

Same, I'm not a huge fan of the dragon form but I could live with it if I could pick my humanoid form and at least look how I wanted to sometimes. Customization does not make up for a base that just feels wrong.

[@wk7996]

You are right I love retail still but the new class and race was wildly stupid.

[@Trazynn]

MMO-Champion in shambles.

[@mrgoob76]

oh why is that?

[@ofensatul]

@Trazynn they've been in shambles for the past 10 years who actually cares about those doomers lol ?

[@agnieszkarieff-wojciechows8631]

Tbf having "only" 4mill subs over years would make many other bussinses super happy.

[@Sykretts]

This is some defeatist nonsense. Any game studio that halves its DAU/MAUS would be kicking themselves for getting it so wrong that 50% of their players just up and left. People spouting stuff like this is so weird, especially when game companies don't operate that way at all. Losing 50% of all your users was an abject failure, no matter how you spin it. Anything else is just delusion.

[@SacredFeline]

Not when you’re on an international scale. You think Netflix would be hyped on 4mil?

[@Byron804]

Sure, but you have to take into consideration that they were down more than 50% and their spending is huge compared to most other businesses.

[@TheEregos]

If Netflix only made one show, YES they fucking would. WoW making more than CoD is huge man.@@SacredFeline

[@kiragoe]

@@SykrettsSame with tv shows, they get canceled if their viewing figures halved even if they're still in the millions.

[@Zilesta]

Wow awesome video. Thanks for getting this out so quickly!

[@polksc33PV]

Bots that Blizzard refused to deal with are the loyal subscribers.

[@OhNoTheFace]

Whatever makes you feel good

[@selwrynn6702]

Very interesting, thanks for covering this.

[@Aedrion-]

I do not believe WoW has 7M subs. There's no way.

[@castleemperor22]

Hard to say, I only do m+ and there's never a shortage of keys. Keys ranging from +11 - +25 (depending on the character I'm on)

[@gradeyundery4939]

half of them are bots lol

[@jellyfrosh9102]

I believe it when you consider how many of them are bots gold farming. Actual humans? Probably 2-3 million.

[@wtfduud]

A lot of it is from Classic.

[@pepepicapinto543]

@@jellyfrosh9102 what a dumb take

[@GideonCyn]

Prior to season one, the world content in Dragonflight was 10/10. It was fantastic, it felt like a living world, hordes of players working together, so many interesting things to see and do thanks to ease of travel with dragonflying. But then when season one launched everyone dissapeared into raids and mythic + and the world content died almost immediately because it all became irrelevant.

[@Korupcija]

the new meta achievement that came with 10.2.6 "a world awoken" gave life to it again, so they just need to give good rewards for doing world content, that's it.

[@Luxumbra69]

it's almost like people didn't want to do world content anymore. People enjoy the grind. Getting to 376 ilvl before the raid opened was cool. The fact that it was world content was a necessary evil. It wasn't something many players really 'enjoyed' more than 'tolerated'.

[@Alcsaar0]

world content is boring

[@Jubileo]

IMHO S3 was goated because it was accessible by a lot of the active player base. Meaning more people were able to complete 20+ keys this season than any other season I can remember. It had a really good learning curve but not brutal. That was key IMHO because it gave people access to higher vault options and achievable 3k scores.

[@saltywings41]

This just tells me that classic is more important for sub growth than I would have thought. I think a LOT of people came back clearly for SOD. I hope this sends a clear message of what players want in the game and what will drive sub numbers. Variety in existing class fantasy, a more 'chill' setting, accessibility in endgame activities and 'new' features that add to the base game.

[@lookiss3]

Yet sod has like 8 devs while retail has fucking 500

[@Tokena14]

Can't really agree - SoD players on my friendlist represents NOTHING compared to when classic released. Pretty much all of my friendlist left after p1 of SoD.

[@laertesindeed]

@saltywings41 Uhhhh.... that graph shows the exact opposite. Granted, we don't know how accurate the graph is.....but if we assume it is close; then it proves classic is irrelevant over the long term. Yes, when classic launched there were many many subs......nobody denies that. But then look at the graph..... those subs vaporized and disappeared within six months. Poooof..... gone. The graph is not showing "what wow players want" long term.....it is showing that you could trick people with a flavor of the month gimmick that everybody finishes and then totally quits and never goes back to. You don't see a bunch of people going back to start wow classic new, nor burning crusade classic new. Nor is there a massive surge in people going to wrath classic to prepare for cata classic. And the season of discovery thing likewise had a surge at launch and then people vanished because it isn't that interesting. The whole idea of classic is not importance, it is gimmick. And no, dragonflight is not great. It is pretty bad, all we can say is that dragonflight is not "as terrible as" shadowlands was.

[@theoutlander1411]

@@laertesindeed The difference in people raiding between Classic Vanilla through WOTLK on Ironforge (inb4 its imperfect) shows a roughly 25% drop in raid participation across the whole as the expansions are released. Using that information, Shadowlands was probably worse than the chart shows and being propped up by TBC/WOTLKC.

[@user-th7cw4dl3o]

We talk about ~4 million subs being low, but that's still the game bringing in $60 million a month, minimum. $60 million/month. That's $720 million a year. That's a WoW's low. And keep in mind that there is no vendor cut here - Blizz is self-distributing this, so no 30% going to Steam or whatever. $720 million a year is WoW low.

[@JRileyD]

Blizz pisses that money away all day long.

[@someguy3508]

for WoW standards it's low. That shows the state of the game.

[@user-th7cw4dl3o]

@@someguy3508I know what the point is, and I'm not arguing. Shadowlands felt dead. But it was still making more per year than most games make in their lifetime.

[@someguy3508]

@@user-th7cw4dl3o ofc, WoW used to walk alone in terms of subscribers, before all those cash grabbing games appeared. In fact I'm not even sure any game surpasses it still. I bet no MMO does. But for their standards they are low. It reminds me of Miltos Tentoglou. He won the long jump gold this year with a terrible jump (8.22) and he was complaining that he was terrible and shouldn't have won. It's the same thing with Blizzard :)

[@TheHolymadrix]

Gross, not net. Wow wasn't making much profit back when it had double that. Which is why king always made more profit then blizzard when owned by activision.

[@BrentHollett]

I can see the splits, but I do think at least for Classic, the community moves together. Wrath is Deserted, but SoD has those people, who'll move back to cataclysm for a bit then back to SoD for Blackwing Lair.

[@mrgoob76]

speaking as someone who was THERE for vanilla, tbc and wrath, i have this to say. People who were NOT there have this romanticized version of the game in their head figuring the game was "better, in the good ye olden days." Real fact is that it isn't! When they get into the classic versions of the game they realize this very quickly and go back to retail or quit the game completely. There is a REASON why the game has moved on patch and expansion pack wise, i am going to be honest there are ALOT of things i don't agree with that they did in the game (shadowlands was an EXTREMELY sour taste in my mouth) and that rivals the sheer badness that is WOD and Cata. I sure wouldn't call dragonflight as shining example of greatness either but the fact after 20 years we are FINALLY getting sub-classes or sub specs is amazing for world within. You have any idea how LONG i have waited to play the ret paladin battle healer? with the more damage i do the more off spec healing i do? i ave been waiting a LONG TIME for that as for the story.... i am not keeping my hopes up, no one should

[@Midgaardsorm-ob8je]

@@mrgoob76 Classic in Vanilla was great because there where no games like that on the market. Playing classic WoW now dont bring back that same feeling. You can compare it to how you remember movies was when a kid then you rewatch them and they suck. Not scary as they was before for example hehe.

[@saulgoodguy1840]

Speak for yourself, Ive found my niche with classic hardcore I dont need others to make it fun and its almost infinitely replayable. Leveling has always been more fun for me than end game and hardcore is exactly what I want from the game

[@99Plastics]

What are you on about muppet, cataclysm is dead and SoD is only thing left with a pulse. Classic was great but it was short lived due to all the sweat lords needing to exploit the leveling system and then say there's no content.

[@BrentHollett]

@@99Plastics cataclysm hasn't started. You're opinion is just that. All in your head.

[@vidgetgaming]

Performance != Subscribers. Blizzard themselves has said that they think that there are better metrics than subs. Legion performed the same as Warlords monetarely, they sold a bunch tokens and mtx

[@shakeitoff1000]

Yeah that's a very wild interpretation from him. Performance is a very specific term. Bellular once again using reactionary language to get hits

[@archdruidbookwalter951]

If you're talking about money then yeah, there are metrics that are more important than subscribers. But that doesn't matter for players who just want to know if the game is fun or not, and for MMOs the most important metric for that is subscribers. If the game is fun, people will play it and the number will go up. Conversely if the number is down, then the game must not be fun. For MMOs in particular, you need a large playerbase to fill groups and keep the world alive, so the number of subscribers has a demonstrable effect on how fun the game is. This is why so many MMOs hide their subscriber numbers when they start to stagnate, if people know that there aren't very many people playing, they won't want to play, making a snowball effect that kills the game.

[@archdruidbookwalter951]

​@@johnathanbowers5433 Funny how you say that when the chart literally shows that the game isn't dead.

[@gorilla30100]

@@johnathanbowers5433 It's crazy how assmad classic players get when they see retail is a massive success. You know you can enjoy both and that either game mode doing well is good for both games, right?

[@belfastclrq]

@@gorilla30100It isn't a massive success. All that graph shows is that if it wasn't for Classic in its various iterations, WoW (retail) would be at an all time low.

[@Vaishino]

it's a lil weird that the lawsuit and reputational damage incurred isn't mentioned as part of their "why did shadowlands fail" but I suppose also that wasn't exactly something that was part of shadowlands.

[@raidwipe]

@@johnathanbowers5433 i doubt it caused much of a problem with sub numbers to be honest, if shadowlands was good the sub number wouldn't have dropped. smartphones are made by slave labour but everyone has a smartphone

[@gorilla30100]

@@johnathanbowers5433 That was more on the activision side of things than Blizzard from what I remember so prob not relevant to the Blizzard team specifically

[@mengyg]

@@johnathanbowers5433 also incorrect, it was a female co-worker who had a relationship with a higher ranked manager, her photos were leaked to upper management and she was bullied into suicide. It was not confirmed if it was the high ranked manager she was having a sexual relationship with was the person who leaked it, but assumptions upon assumptions doesn't make a truth.

[@neugassh3570]

Players dont care about lawsuits

[@mogalixir]

No one cares about lawsuits. It was a fake because to quit after 9 months of 9.1 and no other content and that’s about it.

[@Lunar_OG]

~8 million is certainly a lot more players than it feels like. I'm a new player. It takes 20 minutes to find a random dungeon in retail sometimes, even on a Saturday evening.

[@MSinistrari]

It helps to know what your server's peak times are. For me, with my work schedule since it's centered around weekends, I'm often not able to be on during my server's peak times so I have to adjust.

[@jani14jani]

Random dungeon finder isn't cross faction. You most likely play on a horde cluster as alliance or vice versa. Usually it takes me 5mins to get a group at saturday evening / night as a dps.

[@Lunar_OG]

@@jani14jani I’m not too familiar. Right now I’m leveling an alliance character on Sargeras.

[@arthon3753]

This isn't million subs on retail. It's across ALL warcraft services. Classic, Wrath, SoD, etc.

[@LuckyPed10]

the problem with random dungeon is the lack of Healer or Tank, I always played as healer or tank, I literally never had a dungeon queue take more than 3-5min, Literally never at any time in the day. Somtimes i queue up then want to go to toilet or kitchen I have to run back coz many time it instantly found a group and i was away for 2min and missed it lol But when I queue up as dps ... 10min is fast, 40min is also possible ! it's like 95% of the playerbase is playing dps.

[@JimmyTheShinobi]

Really interesting stuff. Wonder how War Within will affect the numbers.

[@pocketdealseu]

will damage it heavily

[@SapoQLxd]

@@pocketdealseu already dooming lol

[@firesoy]

big spike followed by dropping off a cliff

[@chronicalcultivation]

​@@pocketdealseu considering how many long-time players who had quit are saying they'll return for War Within, I must disagree

[@wight4991]

@@chronicalcultivation so what "new" content are they bringing to the table with "The Fail Within"? because i just see 1 1/2 new features being added, the rest is just regurgitated stuff from DragonFail. And don't come at me with "well there are new zones and dungeons and such" because DUH?!? isnt that supposed to happen whenever a new expansion comes to the game?

[@homemetalstudios759]

the biggest issue i have with wow in any current form is the economies. they let bots run rampant in the classic versions of the game which ruined the economies. After the AH change where AH's are linked to different servers the economy tanked on my high pop server (retail). I have very little incentive to spend time with professions if i can't make any gold of their made goods. And in my case professions supported the gear/gold to be able to consistently raid. For a while i had to do dailies for gold which just felt awful. I don't want to spend $15 a month for free to play gamestyle.

[@lovilife]

This is genuinely fascinating

[@DonutMafter]

I came back after 10 years not playing & dragonflight is hooking me, but I must say the whole version stuff is is pretty complicated, I think if they would bring more structure to the game it would attract more players too

[@Whatever-mq7vy]

You’re doing great work, guys! Keep at it! ❤

[@BoomyNation]

Great video!

[@everybodylieshm]

For all the lessons Blizzards claims to learn theyre still giving us a fated season.. Just unbelievable.

[@everybodylieshm]

And before someone comments "oh but would you rather have a content drought". No, I'd rather have another major content patch or a short expansion. Fated is lazy and I dont like it.

[@suicidalzebra7896]

One aspect that raises an eyebrow in the data presented is where is the expected drop-off from Blizzard's 2023 suspension of operations in China represented? Does it strip out all Chinese users (assuming a monthly WoW user in China is expressed as a subscriber in data) or is Dragonflight's initial post-launch fall and subsequent rise also accounting for loss of China? If the latter is the case then recent sub number increases are even more significant compared to previous years.

[@Spotnick2]

There is no WOW in China since 2023.

[@wight4991]

chinese people can still play other blizzard IP's and it has been proven that Blizz is just taking every active MAU out of every game individually and presents them as "seperate aktive monthly users".

[@breikio]

CN subs are usually always excluded from wow subs reports because the game uses a different model in CN than subscription.

[@tamas9554]

I'd be interested in that too, as its a widely known fact that China has a massive population, and we from Europe and America don't understand the sheer size of it. Its not uncommon for games to have 50% of their playerbase reside in that country alone, while its not that apparent in the game as we know it. WoW had to lose a ton of subscribers when it happened, yet it seemingly had no effect on the game nor is it shown here, which is weird. Maybe its not a global chart?

[@suicidalzebra7896]

@@breikio If you look at the Q3 2015 financial report the definition of Subscriber includes 'Licenced Territories,' i.e. China, and explicitly incorporates Internet Café monthly logins through the pay/hour system. Thus, the 5.5m figure includes all Chinese players who had paid to play at least once during the measurement period.

[@wight4991]

so how did they manage to about double their working force on the WOW-production team since Legion, but the quailty and playable content has about halfed over the years?

[@anisbehloul5885]

Micro transactions (WoW tokens, store stuff, sub deals etc...)

[@CrypidLore]

DEI?

[@jellyfrosh9102]

hiring for diversity quotas instead of actual talent or skill. watch the dragonflight dev interview where it's a bunch of transgenders and women and then compare that to the 2005 blizzcon panels where it's 100% white dudes lol

[@NiloAzzurro]

Great video and interesting numbers. Thanks!

[@VkaraujoHusk]

Waaaaay more than I expected after SL, ngl

[@andrew2616]

This data is good but also very misleading. They are purposely deviating from specifically identifying how many active players are in SoD, classic era, classic wrath and dragonflight. If they want to effectively use company resources correctly, properly identifying this information will lead to better budget management. From my personal experience, when you present information in this way, it’s usually because you want to lead the eyes of the leadership in one direction and avoid certain questions being asked.

[@99Pierogies]

They were just showing total subs. No one is claiming this is the population of retail. I'd say it's split about half between retail with the rest distributed in the classic modes, with sod probably owning like 90% of that share. It's also muddled since people can play any mode on one sub, so they can split their time between all of them, and you'd have to count them for each mode even tho they might spend most of their time on one specific mode

[@andrew2616]

@@99Pierogies ya after i posted this i was thinking more in thought about this and roughly concluded the same thing. I firmly believe that if they do release this information (assuming they even have it) then they it would naturally force a reorganization of resources. Especially since retail is not as active as of now. I think that graph was misleading because it indicates that active subs is increase because of retail when people came back for SoD (Classic + Beta)

[@IShallCallHimTaders]

isn't this the same company that stopped sharing its numbers when they were too low? The "I'm taking my toys and going home" company that behaved like children? Yeah, I don't believe this graph at all.

[@alecgraham143]

im back playing from legion im loving the variety of it all. I might do a couple of levels on HC, then some retail, then do my lockout of season of discovery im enjoying the change !

[@sam8007]

Do they count paused accounts/subscriptions still as subscribed?

[@Olli_H]

They probably talk about revenue not sub-count in earnings report!

[@ViViDG]

Retail WoW doesn't feel like Warcraft, it's an absolute mess of a bunch of colors flying around. Go to Stormwind or Orgrimmar and just look at what you see, take a look at the flying mounts and how ridiculous it all looks, it doesn't feel like WoW, it looks like a Deviantart meetup.

[@austinfilms1007]

This, they lost what Warcraft was supposed to be and now it’s a kids game about dragons and dress up competitions

[@thecheeserat]

"Deviantart meetup" lol its so true, the amount of borderline fetish furries is insane

[@Journeying.]

Great vid Bell!

[@thomassleziak1222]

Also imagine how many players play on free/private servers. Wow still has got massive player base and that makes me happy :D

[@kekgoogle4809]

Shillular trusting blizzard numbers lmao. 7 million? WHERE??? the game was fuckin empty last time I bothered playing.

[@ElFenrir13]

What I'm curious about is that BFA, on that chart, showed *the* historic low(it's slightly lower than Shadowlands' lowest, if you trace the line across, but Shadowlands gets a lot of the inside scrutiny/breakdowns on why it failed/etc. Was it because BFA was obvious in why it dropped subs like a rock? Or did Classic cover for BfA enough that they swept it under the rug? Or was it because Shadowlands had a bigger dip, even if it bottomed out higher than BfA? (Or a mix of the three.)

[@endtimewalker9674]

BFA was more obvious then SL because the Azerite System sucked right until S2. People quit bc it wasnt fun and didnt come back. Ofc Borrowed Power in SL was bad too but didnt sucked as much as BFA. Also you had to grind again for Azerite Power, Story was lame it didnt kept what it promised(Alliance vs Horde) etc.

[@Quikbeam]

The reason Shadowlands gets more scrutiny and analysis is because more people stopped playing during shadowlands than during BFA. If you look at the graph the dip on BFA occured before the release of Classic, the graph in the BFA timeline strictly represents BFA. However the dip you see after shadowlands occurs after the release of not only Classic, but after the release of BC, which would have likely had an increase in numbers temporarily, but we dont really see much of a change in the graph. That suggests that if you were to look at the Shadowlands numbers alone, like you are doing so with the BFA numbers, then Shadowlands would have significantly fewer users, because it is getting the benefit of having Classic added to the pool.

[@rossikc]

I really want to see retails actual numbers without classic. We will never see that graph, but I would suspect that classic has been keeping the subs numbers afloat for longer and more than they care to admit.

[@OhNoTheFace]

@@rossikc Whatever makes haters feel good

[@tamas9554]

@@OhNoTheFace He is not wrong sadly, Classic adds a lot to this graph that is for sure. The statistics of retail alone after BFA aren't clear, but the game is still on an all time low as of DF. It will probably get better with the new expansion, but there's a lot of uncertainty regarding this graph too

[@andrewmatheson238]

A lot more than i expected

[@1TZAH]

Performance does not necessary means subscribers, we do not know what performance is for them, but It may be revenue, it is well-known that the cash shop was giving Activision more revenue even with lower subscribers so If performance is revenue then your estimation is not accurate, it may be way lower.

[@gpturismo]

Well, without a Y or a comparison to the last time they reported numbers, ie WoD, we have no clue to what this chart really means outside they realized that players weren't going to hang around like they use to and they are going to have to do more to make them come back. Everything is assumption/conjecture. I have a hard time believing the 7M number atm because if you look at wow-progress, the total characters to have, or be in a guild with someone that killed something in vault of the incarnates the number is 480,000. That would mean 7% of players have or are in a guild with someone that killed something in HEROIC. That makes that number seem high or raids, especially Heroic and Mythic, are horrible ROI.

[@ForOne814]

Yes, barely anyone raids. What news. Almost like it was always the case. Most people don't even attempt normal, they do LFR at most.

[@Lokipower]

I am so curious to know how that 7M is split between retail, era, hardcore, SoD & wotlk.

[@delete_gaming]

My SoD GM knows what the MDI is but has not played retail since WoD, the better performing players in the guild participate in retail, the rest of the guild are casual classic only players. Some of them didn't know mythic plus was a thing. I had to explain it to them. I was very surprised.

[@pirojfmifhghek566]

I think Classic did a LOT of heavy lifting bringing subscribers back in. There are a ton of people who play Classic and nothing else. There were also a ton of retail people showing up to play Classic as well, but they're clearly much more fickle than the classic players. The retail players were so disheartened by Shadowlands that they didn't even keep their subscriptions to play TBC on the side. They were that sick of it. I came back specifically for Season of Discovery, but I don't think I'm going to be keeping that much longer. The "dj remix" version of classic with the new spells and talents was kinda fun for a couple weeks, but they didn't put much effort into the quests or the world building to make it feel like it was an actual update to the game. I wouldn't be surprised if there was another large dip in subscriptions before the war within finally shows up.

[@Trazynn]

Right, all I needed WoW to be is an interesting world to soak in while I listen to music or audiobooks. Farming stuff was ideal for that and Blizzard just took it away.

[@snuffeldjuret]

@@Trazynn this is why I love playing wow (when I do it) as well. I requires less attention so I can listen to things.

[@lolzz338]

War within comes within a couple of months so there will probably not be large dips anytime soon.

[@WalkerOfTheWastes]

I dont foresee a lot of people sticking around for Cata Classic past the honeymoon phase. Wrath was always the goal and, for many subs, the end of the game they loved. I predict that retails numbers will sligtly increase-especially if they keep up the gameplay momentum and fix the story issues from DF- but Classics numbers will go down, leading to very minor growth or even remaining steady. But given the lows Blizzard have experienced and the fact OW2 is basically dead on its feet, no growth over downturn will be welcome.

[@edwardseavey1172]

Interesting but this could have been 5-6 mins.

[@OhNoTheFace]

Ah zoomer attention spans

[@HelloJTello]

Actually amazing video! Just solid information through and through. All I have to say is this, it goes to show ya what the people want at the end of the day. I really think right now SOD is the best thing going for them. But I do have some hopes for The War Within. I have faith they won't mess it up, but than again will see.

[@luckduvell]

I doubt SoD is that big a piece of the pie tbh. It has completely canibalized the era servers. I think most of the players just moved over

[@MinatureMinotaur3223]

Kinda makes sense looking at the graph why it feels they changed dragonflights story mid way through to go more into the war within.

[@mangowarrior]

That's a big number but venturing out into Azeroth you barely see anyone if at all. Most zones are empty. Only the capital city of Valdrakken is populated

[@newnamesameperson397]

Because you literally have no reason to revisit old zones unless you are farming transmog. I would love to do old quest but one hitting everything is boring. Wish they just add scaling, that would get some people into the old zones (it worked with Eso, you see max level people doing old content all the time) The scaling could even be optional like chromie time..they even do it for certain quest so I don't see why not

[@icswack6015]

Well no shit what is there to do in the world? People are in the raids and dungeons where the content is

[@Tokena14]

@@newnamesameperson397 funny enough most ESO players complain that scaling ruined the true MMO feeling of gearing up and really feeling the impact of getting powerful gear/leveling up - so did it really work or is it just you that like it?

[@blockedperfection9278]

Most likely due to Timewalking, Puts all the people in different phases.

[@OhNoTheFace]

Welcome to MMOs

[@SilverKnight16]

For me, Shadowlands irrecoverably destroyed the lore. What they did was so heinously maligned that "jumping the shark" just isn't an adequate term--they managed to retroactively destroy 25 years of storytelling in a single expansion. It's actually impressive just how badly they cocked it up, to the point where even lore-nerds like me just can't be assed to care about the story anymore. I heard Dragonflight is better, I gave it the old college try, but even half decent bit I saw was followed by the thought of, "Arthas' soul is now a consumable worth 25 anima," and I just...can't make myself care anymore. I'll keep watching from the sidelines and hoping for those that still give a shit that they have a game actually worth paying for eventually.

[@ncgtony1832]

Great maths ! Thanks for the Report.

[@Lenz2371]

Its like they made a chart of how I played the game in the last 8 years haha

[@PayoMetal]

Insane data, I thought we had little over 1m players. It's incredible that even with classic numbers during Shadowlands where SO LOW. That clearly shows that Classic is not carrying wow subs like many say but It is quite helping a lot. I'm really happy that today you can play any flavour of wow you want and that's great for the game. So happy about this numbers. Can't wait for what the team will do during The Worldsoul Saga. 🚀

[@GX-105D]

if anything classic is stabilizing their numbers like i said it would for like forever, not saying it's good to make an old version of a game compete against itself, but in this case, it would help in that regard

[@valebonfi4482]

@@GX-105Dyeah i think the point of classic is to stabilize the numbers, tbc and wrath classic pretty much "saved" shadowlands

[@valebonfi4482]

@@johnathanbowers5433Imagine that chart without any version of retail. Dingus, doof, silly goose. Literally Retail S3 had one of the best M+ season ever but it's all about classic when the line goes up. You are really goofy.

[@Wolfyyy]

​@@valebonfi4482 if you think that retail m+ pulls the same numbers as Classic wrath sod combined, you are absolutely delusional

[@privatename7634]

7.25 million subs. You're welcome.

[@imunfathomable]

So happy I watched this video to know the real context of this graph. Praise be Belular, the utmost authority of graph cryptography! Lmao

[@mooonpaw]

Let's see if they're actually listen and give people draconid ( or drakonaar) tank playable characters.

[@cyndavi6655]

To repair the lore damage would really help, they could make it so Shadowlands was just a dream brought onto everyone through Nzoth (or whoever) and then revert everything back to before SLs happened so that all the main characters are still around and go from there. I doubt they'd do that but they should, imo.

[@evilmarius]

Mythic plus seems loved because there is nothing fucking to do man. All we have m+. And these bunch of executive hobos think we love it all the way.

[@Lingohamster]

Whenever I see comments like this I really ask my myself if ppl have nothing else to do/play and state they play game mode xyz only because there is nothing else to do. And the best part is speaking of ‚we‘ instead of ‚I‘. Take a break from the game. Or tell me at least what it is u think the game needs.

[@evilmarius]

@@Lingohamster i took a break and waitinf for s4 for the nee changes. I think game needs new endgame content and positive affixes for m+.

[@wm1573]

@@evilmarius…..and what is the other content? You still didn’t answer

[@rabl3535]

Play better games, dude

[@Northreyar7314]

Michael, please can you share your UI?

[@Xariann]

I like your analysis of many a game/situation.

[@Hoigwai]

It is more or less what I thought the sub numbers and trends were.

[@bedrosianbaol8930]

A) "Blizzard said that there are 7 millions subs on WoW" B) "Then it must be like this"

[@icswack6015]

Sure they just lied on a presentation in front of all their stakeholders. Do you even know how business works??

[@bedrosianbaol8930]

@@icswack6015 Yes, certainly. They lie and stupid people believe it.

[@bLittlegato]

Dragonflight is my all time favorite expansion, not surprised by the number, as an Altoholic, i was happy no legendary or artifact farma nd was able to play many alts with max gear

[@JasonDaniels]

So do these numbers include all the bot accounts? And does this include people that have multiple accounts?

[@InternetStranger476]

the earnings call seems kind of disingenuous if they haven't disclosed how many are bots

[@s0515033]

They never said how many of the original Wrath were bots, either.

[@ironfist7789]

as long as the bot buys a subscription I guess

[@briandoss9232]

I'm enjoying wow as a general whole. Crazy that they still have 7m players after so long.

[@portalmasterdragon7326]

Im looking forward to getting back into wow i have my demon hunter character in the game still

[@RainWalking]

Well that contradicts everyone's claim for subs before.

[@miniatureswede]

Looking at the chart, dragonflight did as well as the dashed lines expected , just started so low it would never hit the peak.

[@zerti86]

oh no, "wow is dead" people are getting confronted with numbers

[@shakeitoff1000]

Made up numbers btw. He claimed this was concrete data on Twitter and what a shocker, it isn’t.

[@wtff]

@@shakeitoff1000 It's from GDC. It's real.

[@mogalixir]

It’s still bad. Classic prevented the bottom from falling out.

[@zerti86]

@@mogalixir sure buddy

[@quemsereu2009]

​@@mogalixirkeep telling yourself that 😂

[@ShadowsOfThePast]

So happy for the info. I always had a feeling that all the doomsayers were way off with declaring the death of WoW every chance they had but finally there's some actual data to show how wrong they really were. I'm pretty sure though that even after this video a sh*tshow will commence. I feel better about the future of WoW personally but I'm genuinely surprised too of the sub numbers being THAT high.

[@arcc4]

Bellular's guestimate is way off because hes basing it on a misleading statement in a quarterly report and it would basically have to assume that the worst performing expansion of all time managed to gain subs in the last 8 months, which no post-WotLK expansion has ever done. Inversely, we can just do the logical thing and estimate a trajectory of where WoD finished in 2016 and start this new graph right there at the launch of Legion. That would put the subs at the start of the new graphic probably around 4mil and a good 30-35% below Bellular's estimate. Also, the graph suggests that over the duration of BFA and SL retail lost close to halve its player base.

[@Eustres]

@@arcc4 Wasn't WOD 10m and fell to 6m and under? Im ignorant about graphs but can't you just assume that Legion launch bumped up numbers up to around 7m and then fell again?

[@arcc4]

@@EustresYes, but the last report of 5.5mil for WoD was in Dec 2015. Legion didn't launch til Aug 2016, which is another 8 months. Basically the values in this video don't make sense because it would mean that the expansion that lost 4.5 mil in a year didn't lose any more over the next 8 months and maybe even gained some. That's just incredibly unlikely given the trajectory it was on.

[@Freestyle80]

but asmongold told me no one plays it and everyone needs to quit

[@Zakjuh]

@@arcc4it's a cope graph made for wow copelets. who'd have thought

[@Shlnigamii]

The thing i hate the most in the game is level scalling, no matter what gear u get, mobs always scale to u

[@XavionofThera]

That's false. It's LEVEL scaling. Not gear-scaling.

[@Biggamehunna]

i wonder if more people would still be playing if dragonflight was released instead of shadowlands

[@omarcomming722]

You're the only one who's still gushing over the War Within trailer bro, it was still boring and middling

[@austinfilms1007]

Exactly, no one cares about green Jesus anymore since they ruined his arc and no one likes soy boy Anduin. We need more cinematics like the WOD one

[@magus232]

you'd think with so many more people on their team they would be pumping out deeper and larger content then they are but it still feels like the games on development autopilot

[@bdales455]

I really wish blizzard would have more players in each shard. Besides public events the world feel empty, and sometimes even valdrakken feels like it barely has anyone in it

[@Chrisgib90]

It's a strong dose of copium to think current Dragonflight is the reason why that graph is swinging up. That is almost exclusively the boom of interest in SoD, as more people love what WoW was than what it is right now. And you can check that yourself by simply logging in at any time to a major city like Stormwind or Valdrakken & even on a High pop sever it's completely dead. Retail is not performing well at all, those sub numbers are people that came back for SoD - they need to invest more devs, time and money into SoD or a Classic+ , it won't carry retail forever.

[@DisastrousIntentionally]

Nah, SoD numbers aren't strong enough for this increase on their own. As somebody playing SoD, there has been a noticeable drop in players. Dragonflight numbers on the other hand (the ones we can track like raid logs and mythic dungeons) are at all alltime high. Definitely a combination of the two.

[@Gungrave123]

Dragonflight story and visuals felt like designed by Sweet Baby Inc

[@austinfilms1007]

*makes an expansion about happy dragons in a game supposed to be about war* “why don’t people wanna play this expansion?” -blizzard probably

[@WarMonkeyPlays]

Man, seeing this video reverberate through the community must be vindicating! The breaking and analysis of this is a mastercraft move and up there with peak journalism.

[@swm934]

Interesting reporting. I think the specific number is inflated but interesting to see the impact Classic and M+ have been on subscribers.

[@MichaSennin]

This graph could be altered or else. Unless Blizzard doesnt publicly state what the actual Sub numbers are, everything is second hand information. and this video should not be taken serious.

[@tomriggs699]

I agree. Graph means nothing, Y axis isn't even labeled. There's a reason for that it's all fluff.

[@shakeitoff1000]

3:15 to skip to the actual content

[@blacksunshine9995]

The actual content is when asmon reacts later tonight

[@guilaumemorin5844]

My question is. Is WoW getting new players or only surfing with the original players( Classic to Wrath). In 2024 with so many other good games it's hardly believable that theyve been able to keep that many players

[@tamas9554]

It doesn't really matter if they have 600 employees working on WoW, as that alone doesn't tell us how many are actually developing the game, probably not a lot. Its kind of unrelated, but Mojang also has, approximately six hundred people working in it as of 2021, yet players were greatly dissatisfied with the lack of content. Most of these people are probably there for marketing, or some other business staff

[@GerlockArgentDawnUS]

subs per pixel, lol. that's reaching.

[@Dom-zy1qy]

Honestly, every reason that they pinpointed as to why shadowlands failed; they pretty much fixed all of them. The big issue i have with the game currently is that "it's not warcraft, and its not epic". It seems they're looking to adress this in the upcoming expansions. There are also some other smaller issues, but personally if the game is as fun as it is now, and its epic, id play it.

[@snuffeldjuret]

12:14 it is quite wild how high that is. No wonder other mmorpgs fail :D.

[@chronicalcultivation]

I'm one of the people who quit shortly after bfa dropped, then returned during DF. There are many others like me.

[@bellycuda]

12:24 for those who can't bring themselves to sit through all the padding

[@OhNoTheFace]

Ok zoomer

[@bellycuda]

@@OhNoTheFace I will take that as a compliment! thank you very much

[@icEE2603]

graphs with no numbers, why?

[@molotovmole6516]

because he only posts negative stuff

[@Wolffmania]

From what I got from the video those were graphs that were shown at the conference not made by bellular (tho I’m sure they had someone redo the graphs to look better in the video) and then later he explained that the y axis seems to start at 0 based on other information.

[@stephenbrowne119]

7m subs, why can't i find a group or active guild?

[@TheUhmmmmmmmm]

Wonder if they will ever split up the sub counts to show which game is actually carrying them.

[@TheKeller1992]

Them having a "come to jesus moment" about Shadowlands and admitting it publicly is the best sign of the "health" of the WoW team imo, no more head in the sand ignoring valid feedback and being honest with themselves about their mistakes, very happy to see even more so now that Steve Danuser is gone dude was just an anchor on the team imo

[@austinfilms1007]

I hated how much they defended shadowlands back when it was current, thank god they can admit they fucked up now

[@rabl3535]

Nah, this is blizzard, they’ll botch it. blizzard quality = dogshit that barely works these days.