WoW's Actual Subscriber Count | Xaryu Reacts

• Report: WoW's Actual S...
By @BellularGaming
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[@Yuricthebold]

SoD brought me back after almost a decade of not playing.

[@DeathaceGames]

Same! Hadn’t played in over 15 years and this got me playing SoD. Have been having a blast learning everything (again)!

[@LegionInfanterie]

same here

[@botanicab]

Same

[@Barkdoggz-xk3vv]

You are over 30. And so is everyone playing the game. 30yr olds are “set in their ways” and do not like change. They just want to compare their own relevance with everyone else and perfect that state of the game. That’s why each (over 30yr old) prefers their own WoW era. Nobody new plays the game. 18-25yr olds shown ingame pics of WoW had no idea what it is. In comes Plunderstorm. The single only thing that can save WoW. How? 18-25 crave BRs. Once It comes to Xbox Game Pass we will have 10mil console players who have likely never owned a PC, meaning never played ANY version of WoW, will now know what WoW is. Plunderstorm DID save WoW. FFXIV will launch on Xbox first tho because the 30yr olds won’t give up their addons. Cant play without them? Then Demand Blizzard encode them officially rather than just holding the royalties on any of them hostage. Nearly every QoL Addon is in FFXIV by default.

[@sniffy8025]

Why you dont try out Ascension WoW then? Its so much better than SoD... I cant understand why people still playing Blizzard games.

[@jamesb7792]

I’m quite hopeful for retail next xpac. For me, SoD brought me back, but doesn’t quite itch the competitive itch that I need. I’m hoping that there are many out there like me

[@semus9159]

they're are

[@Qstorm88]

✋🏿

[@Giggles4692]

Cata leveling and casual pve sucks, but if you want competitive, Cata has hard raids and good pvp

[@ugriDnuub]

HCs importance is massively overstated. I haven't spoken to a single person ingame that played that for any serious length of time or resubbed just to try that. Instead people did come to Classic Era when the community discovered it was alive! I met several people that had just missed the 2019 release and now saw an opportunity to try it out. That fed into SoD too + Blizzcon with Metzen and 3x expansion announcement leading into season 3 was huuuuuge for retail.

[@maxmusterman7620]

Me and my friends are just playing Wow for HC and now Plunderstorm. Normal Classic is just way to easy.

[@0GNAS0]

@@maxmusterman7620i resubbed for hardcore although i only kept playing until around lvl 20 something cus the leveling experience just felt too stressful

[@DeathaceGames]

I started playing WoW for the first time in over 15 years to try out SoD. Has been a blast for me as a new (returning) player.

[@youcubedu12]

Hardcore caught the attention, it's a trigger. It didn't catch the players but it might be the trigger of the first resub ahah

[@dannyp9210]

HC is niche, but I think it did a great job in exposing WoW to a larger audience. A lot of people don't like to play HC, but they find it funny to follow other people play HC (and die).

[@pureloser2526]

Imo the issue with WoW is not that is an MMO, its that you have to pay $60 to buy the game then $15 a month in 2024! Thats crazy, I get game pass for $15 a month and I get 200 games. Fortnite free, league free. The subscription made sense when it was the “best game ever” but now you get punished for wanting to get back into a game? Makes no sense to me. Add a battle pass whatever you need to do that way more casual players can try and enjoy the game. Update: Just want to say I do not think the $15 a month is killing WoW, I just think it kills any new player base from jumping in. The fact it is a hyper complex, relatively long grind. You immediately are punished for “getting into the game,” because you now have another monthly bill of $15. If a new player is even remotely frustrated or bored in anyway why not quit and save yourself time and money. The $15 a month isn’t awful for a community that is used to paying it but imagine as a new player right now with all the alternatives.

[@sere971]

I partially agree but at the same time a lot of other MMOs have this sub fee as well still-- I'm not sure if that really justifies having a sub fee just because all of the most popular ones have it, but it would be hard to convince Blizzard that giving up $100 million per month or w.e it ends up being after the sub discounts is likely to be a successful strategy, since people are clearly willing to pay it.

[@ziggs123]

As long as they have a monopoly in mmo, they won't change a profit Maschine. League has 20x the player base but doesn't make nearly as much as blizzard does. It's sad but that's the reality, would be really nice to see wow go f2p/game pass and get a lot of new players

[@mup3tt340]

I would 110% prefer to pay $15 a month with no cash shop/micro, I had no issue paying $60 for an expansion but the cash shop side of things is really off putting to me

[@MichaelDavins-id7vx]

Maybe they can introduce a f2p server in wow for new players with limited content (like runescape) but add cash shop into it

[@curcicreations]

They are different game models.. both league and Fortnite rely on skin sales but wow relies on subs so very bad comparison

[@andrewshandle]

Xar, there's no way those graphs will have any Plunderstorm data in them based purely on timing, although I'd be curious to see if it has made any sort of impact.

[@WoWUndad]

Bro a grown adult isn't cOmInG BaCk for a casual bg mode with 30 seconds of gameplay. If anything plunderstorm is an apology for ashenvale/no retail pvp unless ur a dh for the past year

[@savage4033]

@@WoWUndad I could see someone on the edge of playing WoW again coming back to play plunderstorm and get back into WoW in general. With a lot of cool shit recently like War Within cinematic and Hero talents like rider of the apocalypse being shown plunderstorm could just be the last straw on getting some players they haven't played in awhile back.

[@lobuvies]

Very little impact.

[@andyfibb]

dude they were 5 yrs late to the BR game... it probly brought a few thousand back for a 1 month sub to quit IF that. crossed my mind but said fuck that

[@andrewshandle]

@@WoWUndad I never said it'd bring lots of people back, I'm just curious if it'll move the needle at all.

[@Kahuno-WoW]

When logging into WOTLK or SOD, it feels very alive. This is good business as they maintained the global subs even though we are all playing different games on WoW; and it feels enjoyable as a player.

[@andrecardoso6941]

don't know about SOD cause I quit 1 week into phase 2 but wotlk is far from alive. Most guilds are dead and people got bored long ago. PvP is kinda dead and pve is full of GDKP.

[@insanity2929]

@@andrecardoso6941it died when the end of the expansion is here ofc it’s gonna happen Every expansion when ulduar was out it was not dead at all

[@radlander]

love it or hate it, Valdrakken has been popping too. curious to see what The War Within brings.

[@neatlytrimmed1849]

my man all you have to do is launch the the classic clients and look at servers there isn't a single full server SoD has 3 high population servers. classic only has a few medium population servers. hardcore is all low pop servers. wotlk classic has a couple of medium servers. then you look at retail and they have tons of high pop and full servers as well as multiple different servers for different parts of Europe. you are coping so hard if you think for a second classic even comes close the retail player base.

[@Theaimanifesto]

most wotlk players play on warmane pservre@@andrecardoso6941

[@whateverjustposting]

what this says to me is them casting a larger net by providing multiple versions of the game for a single sub is a good thing. but classic is only going to last so long, so with sod im reeeeally hoping that classic + becomes a real thing and diverges into an entirely different direction

[@insanity2929]

They are gonna just keep going with classic and when it ends they can just restart the cycle and people will play private servers have been going on for two decades, it doesn’t ever have to end

[@chedisLoL]

I wouldnt be so sure about that. Old school runescape has been out for over a decade now and still maintains 100k+ players which for gaming is massive. So wow vanilla should easily be able to sustain for well over a decade or more before it becomes an issue which they are already addressing by providing expansions and SOD. So basically WoW classic is a revolving door. If they release WOW MOP classic then go back to TBC. I could easily see it sustaining 100-200k players indefinitely or at least, in waves.

[@shadowviruz]

@@chedisLoL yup all blizz has to do is continually release new servers and consolidate down the dead ones. Maybe release something crazy like SoD where we try different stuff to keep it fresh.

[@rymesyt851]

I think Max said a dev told him SoD is 'basically a beta for Classic+' so there is me hoping.

[@grim86]

Classic+ can only exist if they do a remix with content from Classic to WOTLK. Diverging story will destroy WoW in its entirety

[@Pastrahmy]

For the current player split, I think the poll on the World of Warcraft official KZbin from 3 months ago is pretty accurate. 46% said they were playing DF, 40% SoD, 10% Classic, 4% HC.

[@Jdub365]

Content creators playing hardcore and sod gave me the bug again. I still have not tried those modes, but I am subbed and getting ready to try cata again.

[@tizzbungo]

Honestly, DF's shitty story is what is holding it back. The mechanics are great, with no borrowed power or big grind, I don't feel majorly behind everyone else when I come back from a break and that makes me more inclined to go back and play again. In previous expansions, even if I wanted to go back and play WoW again I often didn't just because of how far behind I knew I'd be. I don't have that with DF.

[@SoothingMusic883]

u play WoW for the story? omegalul

[@vance4171]

@@THEROTTINGDOGwhenever they updated models and gave humans that jank ass walk. That was it for me lol

[@Bitchlasagna69]

The story is a huge part of the game, cope.

[@Grumpypu]

@@SoothingMusic883 the story affects the setting of the expansion, so things like transmog, mounts, dungeons, raids etc. will always follow that theme. If the theme sucks, everything in the game becomes worse, no matter how good the game actually is, and you can see that in DF right now.

[@mag3481]

Actually the theory about people coming back for sod then trying retail is true for me. I don’t like sod but arenas are feeling fun. It’s just hard to find a solid rogue to push with and I’m not the same player I was. But I’m relearning and it’s a lot of fun

[@Fyuture]

Actually, I am a new WoW player, started 5 months ago. My WoW Journey looks like that: WoW Era for 2 Weeks -> WoW SoD for 4 Months -> Retail (started some days ago and enjoying it the most)

[@Giggles4692]

Day 9's video of retail accurately shows how bad retail is for new players.

[@Changedmymindnowimsaved]

Free to play for plunder and gives tokens for a vendor that you could get skins, but also sub account in game gear/mounts would be a great fishing lure to get subs.

[@M1ntberrycrunch]

Didn't WoW become unavailable in China at some point? When did that happen? Surely that would put a dent in the sub numbers?

[@rolandheinze7182]

If they were smart they'd normalize and remove china when publishing public numbers to make everyone think they're doing well

[@netherialdreyrimani]

yes it absolutely did, dont know if the chart accounts for that or not. probably going to see an astronomic rise in player count with them coming back in, on top of war within pre expansion stuff coming in soon.

[@victorgarcia-mu7ro]

Dragonflight mid spike believe was also related to Blizzcon and the ease of life announcement for coming patches. I know I came back with friends for this reason to give wow a chance

[@jamesnicolson866]

The thing is a lot of players play all game modes. I do. In the last year the 2 versions I've been playing the most are retail and classic era. Played HC and SoD, although haven't bothered with SoD after getting my level 40 runes. Since Plunderstorm launched its the only WoW game I've played.

[@starburst9495]

This could've been an email easily

[@peanotbuttercop6890]

Hahaha I like ur take on his content tho, nice perspectives and additions. I feel like Bellular should let you review his content before publishing xD

[@xreaturegaming6243]

what concerns me is we can count at leats 10percent off that for bots that are in wow too

[@JahjuanR]

BFA brought me back to WoW after leaving in WoTLK been a daily player every since. Love this game and glad to see they are giving out more jobs to others that love it.

[@Linkk99]

Is it possible for you to draw on white board for us visual learners? This is just super interesting to see this graph like this but adding your drawings and thoughts on a "white board" would be sick too.

[@treedoor]

I would have assumed subs were around 2-2.5 million

[@LordsUther]

what living in a negativity bubble does to a mf

[@TheGoatLocker]

Lmao I love how the tone has changed on this video compared to say asmondgold "wow is dead" videos. Can't tell you how many times I argued against that point, knowing (because it's obvious if you play the game) that wow is no where near "dead" or even close to dying for that matter. Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard for around $70 billion ... That's like buying every NFL franchise and them some. WoW being healthy is likely the largest contributing factor to that massive price tag. When confronted with the truth people can't help but change their tune, and it's funny.

[@Darkcranio]

There is no y axis, this is a leak from an earning call. This is revenue not sub numbers.

[@LordsUther]

@@DarkcranioYou are dumb. Every earning calls they talked about SUBSCRIBERS but the ONE TIME we took that to guess subscribers now haters say its revenue. Stop being so delusional

[@hersheyquestlol]

Surprising to see current sub numbers are basically the same as the height (the very end) of vanilla.

[@Fingolfin3423]

I personally had to stop in June of 2022 in late Shadowlands due to some life responsibilities changing, and I didn't have the time to lead our guild and team as guild master and raid leader anymore, especially since we were mythic raiding and pushing for Cutting Edge each tier. Warlords was indeed horrible, and I agree with you, Xaryu. Legion was a great expansion, but then Battle for Azerorth was horrible again. Shadowlands was even worse. It was a real killer, and I saw almost all of the great people I knew quit year by year. All of the sudden I was one of the few people left. It was just constant recruitment. At around the 10:00-minute mark where they show the internal slide going over the problems with Shadowlands, they failed to mention how the mythic raids were extremely overtuned. Right out the gate with Castle Nathria in Shadowlands, it was a real difficult raid to clear on CE. Council and Generals were two horrible fights. Sire had serious problems, too. Xy'mox was easier, but also incredibly tedious. There was an absurd number of one-shot mechanics, both for each individual player as well as instant raid-wiping mechanics. We went through several players as we worked through that raid, and we eventually got our CE right before the deadline. A similar thing happened in Sanctum of Domination. Super tedious bosses with the same kind of insta-wipe mechanics all over the place. We went through a solid dozen players as we worked through that raid tier, and we eventually got CE on mythic Sylvanas after 600 wipes and reprogging with new players. That was the worst fight I've ever experienced in WoW. It was a 14-15-minute fight, and it required so much perfect play and coordination. That was the first raid tier where I actually removed myself from the raid and did calls as the 21st man from the outside. It was impossible for me to both play and raid lead simultaneously. I continued to do that in the next raid tier - Sepulcher of the First Ones. After we killed mythic Halondrus, that's when I had to stop playing and put the guild on hiatus. I never came back after that. I had played from March of 2005 until June of 2022, and I had lead our guild since TBC days in 2007. If you carefully look over that graph, you can see how WoW has been carried by all Classic versions since Classic first came out during Battle for Azeroth. The slumps in subs would be much lower in this graph without Classic. I remember when Classic first came out in Battle for Azeroth. It was right when guilds were progressing through mythic Eternal Palace. We were working on mythic Ashvane, which was another absurdly difficult fight requiring hundreds of wipes as a mid-tier boss. Just dumb. We lost four of our raiders to Classic at that time if I recall, and we had to reprog with some new people. With regards to mythic+ being at a reported all-time high, I'm going to assume that's due to the exodus from mythic raiding. Anyways, thanks for making this video.

[@Telarius]

I agree with Beluar on class design being better and more fun/interesting. Since classes are the lens you see the world through if they're good even a meh xpac can be fun.

[@nightknight7748]

I think all the clickbate titles made people actually believe wow was dead or on the verge of dying its definitely not as popular as it used to be in its golden days but the game is truly far from death you can see that simply by opening the server selectors with 100's of high pop servers

[@rymesyt851]

Apart from the retail/classic split (im sure a lot of people play 1 or the other so not saying thats wrong), Im sure there are a lot of people playing a bit of both aswell. I play both retail and SoD, whatever Im feeling like. Classic helps a lot for the moments where the retail season drags on a bit for example. So I think it really is hard to put exact numbers on the split. Im just glad there are still a lot of people enjoying WoW, regardless of which version.

[@YORI-TV]

What are these TBC and Wrath players from the past playing now?

[@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!"

[@thegame2427]

This just tells me until Retail is their man focus nothing will change. Their focus is Classic HC, SOD, Plunderstorm Etc.....

[@mattyfinality]

They should invest a bunch of money just combine everything in one game. Make like a portal in major cities that once you go through, your immediately on your classic account and in classic wow, no logging out, opening up a new client just seamless transition. Then if you have had enough of playing classic for a bit you can just go back through the portal and boom your on your retail account in retail wow. That would be so dope.

[@AndyTaken]

13:00 - Absolutely the case for me and some friends, I occassionally go on dragonflight but mainly to run old content for xmog, SOD and Classic HC was why we all resubbed. They have all since left and I've cancelled my sub until next xpac.

[@therealmoto3676]

started since season of discovery and been loveing the game since, parsing 97 avg on my resto druid ^^

[@DirkDrothers-rl9ts]

Good job mate

[@m4ster_root]

The reddit graph clearly shows that the subscription count reached equilibrium during Wrath with the downfall beginning in Cataclysm and continuing during MoP. I would love to see subscriber counts groped by age. It's funny how end of Wrath / start of Cata has the highest subscription numbers when so many (or more likely a few loud) gamers blames Cata for being the start of the end. Cata still ended with a higher sub count than TBC started with. The downfall was inevitable. Vanilla is the only expansion where you're really developing your character, from 0 to 60. TBC was the first DLC while the game was still hot. A completely new world with zones guiding you through 10 new levels, and more... Wrath was just a new iteration of the same stuff we got with TBC. A new area in Azeroth with zones guiding you through 10 new levels, and more... At this point subscriptions had stabilized. New subscriptions was balanced out by cancelled subscriptions. It seems likely that they revamped Azeroth in Cata hoping to bring new life to the 0 - 60 experience. I many ways like a WoW 2.0 release. With gamers going to college/university or starting jobs, the decline in subscriptions really does seem to have been inevitable! I'm sure the drought of content during Cata didn't help. But with a graph like this, it really feels like WoW Players simply reached a point where WoW no longer seemed fresh. New DLC's were just more of the same. Changes required you to relearn. Changes might even alter your character so much you no longer feel good about it. Changes are never easy, but they're needed! A downfall was inevitable. Many classic WoW Players cry for Wrath Era servers. Servers that dont progress to Cata. But what are the chances that these WoW Players will keep an active subscriptions multiple years into the future, replaying the same content over and over again? I do not see them keeping their subscription forever, just to play Wrath for the rest of their lives.

[@Gambling4Life]

these graphs just prove that no matter how bad a game blizzard makes, people will still pay them ...

[@DanielAnderssson]

I think SOD and classic is keeping the graph up

[@Druiditup]

I came back for SoD and still probably won’t ever touch retail again. I’ll come back for the new phases of SoD to try new raids / runes etc, but got turned off to retail servers expansions ago. Tried to play dragon fight with my brother, but just couldn’t get into it…

[@Walshie03]

12:50 carried by SOD

[@NeutralTea]

I get the reason they won't but I know plenty of people that say they wished WoW would go to Game pass and they would definitely play it. (Especially new players) Was a big hope of mine and others this would happen and I believe in the long run This would benefit Blizzard and Microsoft. My guessing thoughts. I didn't really play through MoP. I skipped it basically. Even when interested I just didn't lay during that time. I proh still was subbed though haha

[@Joekary5]

Even if 80% of the current players are on the classic games and only 20% are on retail.... Retail still makes WAYYY more money than the classic games which is a big W for Blizzard... Retail isn't going anywhere. But I would personally bet that maybe 60% of the players are on Dragonflight and the other 40% spread through the classic versions

[@pureloser2526]

I think thats a pretty fair guess I would go as far to say maybe a little more on retail. Its easy in a community like this to think classic is huge, but in reality I truly believe more people watch than play classic, especially hardcore.

[@salviosama7942]

Actually delusional. More like 2.5m SoD, 500k or less Hardcore and 5-5.5m retail players just based on logs and mythic plus runs lmao.

[@Telarius]

Id guess like 5-6 mil subs on retail and maybe 2ish mil spread between Wrath, Tbc, HC, and vanilla servers. With SOD the most pop of the classic versions. Why? I log onto when it was a thing BARELY anyone on. I log onto wrath. Again. Barely anyone on. It's kinda...a lil populated. I log on SOD and there's LOTS of people. I log onto retail I see LOTS of people.

[@Babaganoosh69]

@@Telarius TBC doesn't exist anymore, what server are you logging into on Wrath? Retail pulls people together through cross server sharding, Classic doesn't have cross server systems aside from RDF and BGs.

[@Telarius]

ment to say when it was a thing@@Babaganoosh69

[@fyisic]

The subscriber count is not the same as active player count. Many don´t bother cancelling their sub or they play very casually. That said it looks to be a very healthy amount of players.

[@realname4898]

Either way that's still part of an active player base, they play just not all day... I play maybe 2 hours max a day.

[@MrTirien]

Marker on whiteboard, yeah.

[@trysephiroth007]

I can't imagine hardcore having any impact on players coming back for a graph. But I could see it keeping some people subbed where about to be done with Classic

[@darielchang5302]

I keep seen the same names in pvp for multiple seasons there is no way subscribers are over one million

[@blakenewport8249]

Does dragonflies just automatically download when you play plunderstorm? Cause I never downloaded it and I am playing plunderstorm. Just asking cause if I can get it for free somehow that be cool

[@Oguh608]

It runs on the retail client so you'd need to have dragonflight installed to even acces plunderstorm. How are you playing plunderstorm btw? Are using the blizzard cliënt and clicked on the Retail client to play? It's also impossible to get it for free. Only playable will subbed.

[@blakenewport8249]

@Oguh608 I logged into retail and leveled chars. And still don't have dragonflight. So yes plunderstorm does not require dragonflight to play. If you need screen shot let me know but I can't level pass 60 and play plunderstorm all the time. I have never downloaded retail expansion cause I just play classic, tbc, wotlk, and sod.

[@fractalshapes]

I'm positive that they purposely omitted wod from that graph lmao

[@IzzetNilson]

You know, WotLK being almost exactly a straight line is interesting to me. I didn't think about it until now but I remember starting to see ada for WoW until cataclysm-mop, which was where we see the numbers first actually going down. Advertisers are the first tell tale sign of problems with the game? 🤔

[@dahut95]

Wotlk had loads of ads for sure. They got a bunch of celebrities who play to endorse it. Some are pretty good actually lol. Worth a quick watch of the compilation :P

[@IzzetNilson]

@@dahut95 omg i completely forgot about those xD thats fair actually

[@BFusey]

Everyone waiting to multiply it by 15

[@Zenistful]

What's real crazy is no other game can hold a match towards WoW still.. which is what's really sad

[@rob4750]

I think dragonflight activity is getting a bit boosted by ppl who subbed for classic?

[@DennyHoffmann]

SoD was fun... for a month, same as Wrath. I don't want to dwell in the past, I want the game to be good again going forward. I don't have hopes for WW at this point, but I do want to see it thrive.

[@matthew7972]

Dragon flight was fun at first

[@Coldkill2001]

Sure is crazy how everyone pissed and moaned about Cata, yet a lot of people seem excited about it

[@rsf886]

The sub price is still the same, yet we have more versions of wow to play. Feels like im getting more for my money than ever before. And content droughts dont last when you can just try another game mode. And although slightly different they still scratch the wow itch in different ways.

[@LewsTherin00]

5 million subscribers at $15 per month is still printing money.

[@krispe2512]

Hunters need a book that removes dead zone

[@Onestroke]

I dont get why anyone would doubt subs being so high. Just look how many verisons of this game there is and they all have massive bot farms lmao. I'd imagine they are even higher honestly

[@JungerJk]

Outside of the exact Sub number, Xar has the details from his own channel performance. I'd wager that overlaying views and subscriber interest for this same time period would like show similar trends.

[@t.k.tyrantic1192]

Xaryu you are such a nice and genuine guy. You must be the type of guy that hears he's "Too nice" often. No offense. Anyway it's a good look :) I love watching your content.

[@robertfrederick7125]

I just can't see Plunder storm numbers being that very accurate. Reason, you have to login to a World of Warcraft classic or retail client to even access it. Would be nice to take the subscriptions and divide them by what they are actually playing for each game mode you enjoy. So, there might be 7+ million playing, but it definitely doesn't even come close to feeling like it.

[@LMFFALY]

How many subscribers are Chinese bots?

[@Pewpewchaos]

Dragonflight is the first wow expansion i didn't try.

[@TurboV8boi]

I think they are putting too much into that graph as being to scale/correct.

[@Oguh608]

It's a rough estimate but I think we can confidently say they atleast have a few millions subscribers currently.

[@Mighttester]

Xar I know you've sworn off retail for now, but I leverage my sub for both always. i PvE in SoD and PvP in retail. Sometimes I even run some keys for fun. Half my SoD guild plays retail, it's not as dead as you think it is and the cross pop is MUCH higher than you'd imagine.

[@vectorzvideos9396]

If you think classic is carrying retail you have rocks in your head hahaha

[@DirkDrothers-rl9ts]

Retails for tiktok addicts

[@pneuma33]

Just got off work Xar. This is the content I like to see when I get home

[@christiandavis1143]

xar, you gotta take twitch chat out of your videos, it literally gives me secondary brain rot.

[@DirkDrothers-rl9ts]

True

[@meattwinkie6208]

WOD was bad for me as well

[@AluviumOSRS]

Here's the funny thing. I don't play WOW. Never did and don't want to (OSRS player and can't sweat another MMO). However, I watch all of Xaryu's vids to get WOW info because I'm interested in WOW and MMO's and this is the best source of WOW info. Weird, I know but deal with it. Xaryu is king in this realm.

[@GazerPlur420]

You're not the only one. I've never played WoW either. Tibia was my MMO so I couldn't get into WOW since I was grinding that game in 2001. But I take alot of interest in hearing about WOW because these dudes are passionate about the game and it's entertaining to me to listen to what they have to say about it.

[@AluviumOSRS]

100%! I guess anyone remotely interested in MMO's are going to consume WOW content in some way or another.@@GazerPlur420

[@samuelmeisterw]

hello xaryu

[@Tyrvana]

Let's give credit to where its due, SOD not HC or Plunderstorm that just came out, for the massive spike, hc still played a part but plunderstorm def did not.

[@brunobnutti]

i tried dragonflight, and as a new player but is so much things to learn that i just quit.

[@politelyupset]

I left WoW back in the middle of Cata not because I didn't like the game but because all my friends stopped playing. Got back in Legion for a month or two - that doesn't count. Have been playing WotLK with my wife since the summer of last year and staying for Cata. Thinking about trying out the modern WoW just because it might be better suited for my much more casual spouse. P.S. Unfortunately can't play Plunderstorm despite it being quite similar to one my favorites of all time - Battlerite Royale (R.I.P.) - due to motion sickness. If only the camera was isometric...

[@xXdnerstxleXx]

7:32 I want to give a big disagreement here. I think it's merely an excuse or rarionalisation for the decline. I for one started in Mop as a teenager and had all the time in the world to this day to play every expansion and yet I quit each expansion faster than the previous one. Level max, clear the dungeons night one, get invited into some guilds cause they are happy with your dungeon performance, wait for the raid to release, start doing the raid, realize you are better than all the people cause you are young and your reaction time isn't dogshit, get denied by players worse than you for some raids for not having the correct logs of the last expansion cause you quit and so on and so on. IF the expansion were good the sub numbers wouldn't tank that much. Regardless of the majority of the community being middle aged or not with the many responsibilities of life.. The subscription would be kept atleast. It's just that every single expansion sucked since WOD unfortunately. I've had great fun with classic but can't stand a single of the new expansions. Played oder MMOs like BDO and so on instead.

[@DatAFKdaddy]

btw I am on Crusader strike sod my man..I have seen you around homie ;)

[@Darkcranio]

There is no y axis, this is a leak from an earning call. This is revenue not sub numbers.

[@GreenwoodTony7]

The fragmentation of plunderstorm has been about 80% of players disappear from DF. Should be playing hearthsotne in warcraft not splitting every thing you might queue for into whole new games.

[@austin4855]

7.25m * at $20/mo considering tokens and shop pulling up a $13-15 sub... that's an impressive 145 million a month... 1.7 billion a year... and ONLY SIX HUNDRED STAFF???? That's 3 million per employee!!!! Their infrastructure and other non-payroll expenses simply can not possibly be that expensive. They're not spending more than 5-10% of that on marketing or we would see the impact. They're not spending more than 200m on infrastructure. A few pockets are getting lined with gold while the rest starve.

[@ieatchickenadobo]

Season 3 has been quite a successful season, for key pushers and casuals. I think he's downplaying how enjoyable people find it to gear and raid in retail atm. I understand he might very well be done with retail but the success of season 3 seems to be understated. The season 3 changes to M+, at least i believe, will either make it even more successful or piss a lot of people off; interested to see how it concludes. Irregardless, it shouldn't matter which iteration of WoW you play, more players playing the game is good for all WoW players.

[@azaphakaylock2789]

I think the rise up of players in retail during dragonflight is actually just a lot of returning players who left in shadowlands testing the waters in retail after doing classic HC or SoD. I myself am one of them players and I know many others who fell into that group. I don't think that growth truely shows the state of retail being great, it simply shows that a lot of players did eventually come back to wow and try it out, I personally did this before going quiet until war within (personally i find DF to be a bit dull, but its certainly better than shadowlands)

[@TLim-mr7ro]

Conclusion: We need WoW 2.0 to bring together the fragmented player base.

[@zombieraccoons4509]

All the speculation is interesting. Everybody is biased to the version of the game they play, which is super obvious. Personally, I think Dragonflight is great and the developers did a great job working not only on the expansion content but systems that will carry forward and not just be trashed at the end of the expansion. Which is what I think is carrying the growth we see and not classic content. But I doubt that will be reflected by the audience here which is mostly classic based.

[@lewischristopher8906]

as someone who didn't subscribe/log-in to legion once, i'm surprised that legion is used as a metric of "good"

[@konstantinosarvanitis4104]

Dude every time I listen to beluar talking, somehow I manage to loose my train of thought and I can’t really absorb what the hell he is saying. Is it me? I am not talking for this specific video.

[@shadowviruz]

I cant watch any parts of the video with Bellular's face, there is just something off about how many emotes his face goes through.

[@AvatarofHate]

same

[@timr86868]

Your chat is absolutely delusional. "Maybe time to scrap retail"?? lmao, look outside of the echo chamber...

[@luckycoin8269]

They should have thrown retail in the trash after Shadowlands.

[@radlander]

For all the rivalry smack talk, I think "People who play both Classic and Retail" gotta be the most underrepresented groups in all these KZbin videos. You're paying for both - it's okay to like and play both!

[@Wuhangangg]

theyre to fat and antisocial to have any form of thinking for themselves. just laying in bed eating hot cheetos and hotpockets and parroting everything they hear from streamer xD

[@Grumpypu]

@@radlander yeep, both have their pros and cons, I dont think its as simple to say as retail or classic is better, at least for me. I enjoy both classic and retail, for example right now I got really bored of retail until next season, so Im playing a lot of SOD.

[@Fallenbrave]

I will say, I've never seen the game as "dead". Then again I play on Argent Dawn EU. RP servers seem to have relatively stable populations and communities.

[@FonFreeze]

Bots and lack of GM's policing game even not mentioned as problem :D

[@velho6298]

Looking at MAU from WoD vs current, this graph doesn't seem right. Blizzard removed Y scale for a reason. Of course it's big numbers but not even close to 7 mil without counting hype seasons. If the WoD subscriber numbers were around 6 mil so I would believe depending on the expansion cycle you would have to scale those numbers accordingly

[@Slashresto]

Cata, MoP, Legion will be HUGE for classic coming up because BC/Wotlk is to easy for the modern player and most older olayers who only liked Vanilla would never play BC/wrath anyway. You’ll with 100% certainity see a increase in subs for cata /mop and we will prob see 8 mil subs by MoP. Cata and MoP brings back alittle more skill into gameplay and content becomes slightly tougher catering to the modern players and the ppl who started cata/mop. WoD can be good IF they fix the scrappee content like the shattrath raid etc OR make it a 1 year expansion instead of 2 like most classic expansions and put legion on a longer period instead. Around Legion they should also restart classic with classic 2.0 alongside the Legion classic and u can stop classic 1.0 in Legion and u continue in 2.0 instead.

[@TCHrulez]

I started in Legion, played every expac since and classic. I've never had more than one character fully leveled and geared out to do mythic plus and raid. That's a problem, leveling and questing is so boring and time consuming I refused to partake in a second character. Also the time between major updates/raids releasing is way too long, you burn out and cancel sub before the next raid. Imagine if you could level, gear up, clear a raid for a few weeks and move on to the next and not wait months. Sounds like my friends and raid team wont be getting the new expac because they are already talking about burn out in the next expac from their time playing the last one.

[@jaded-harper]

wow has always been a seasonal game m8. thats never going to change unless wow 2 comes out lmao

[@TCHrulez]

@@jaded-harper Cool, I'd rather be playing a game that will hold my interest for more than 6 weeks

[@jaded-harper]

@@TCHrulez that's fair. go for it bossman. that's what I do when I get bored of wow or my friends stop playing

[@roeibi88]

So... Whats the sub count?

[@dougsheltonds]

They need to add a 1 v 1 rated pvp Q cause why the hell not. Just let people know that pvp will not be balanced around 1v1

[@theswede3286]

Just think of how low the numbers for Shadowlands would've been if TBC and WotLK wasn't propping up those numbers. You know Blizz has those numbers. If only someone would leak them.

[@dutyofcall7659]

Played since WotLK and I've quit dragonflight after trying to push the 0.1% title in M+ twice but didn't worked not just because the meta was to stiff that you could only play 5 classes but also because I got temporarily banned by a random group mass-reporting me for no reason. I still managed to do Cutting Edge in Raid Season 2 but left the guild shortly after due to massively toxic behavior. It was an overall very negative experience with the game & community which is why I won't coming back any time soon.

[@Quettesh]

It didn't leak, they literally released it.

[@UchihaMadaraGr]

Well, anecdotal data but truth and still data... I play SoD which means i still pay sub. I uninstalled retail recently because i didn't play for the past 6 months and it needed patching and i wanted to transfer it to the other SSD so i deleted and the thought was to reinstall clean. Continued playing SoD...Plunderstorm hits, didn't reinstall and i won't only for plunderstorm anyway. I don't think that anyone that doesn't have something to gain out of it (streamers /ytubers etc) would reinstall only for it. I strongly believe however that if someone was up to take a break or quit or whatever (not be subbed) , would keep him in at least till it gets boring. What i expect is that subs will get through the roof with the start of P3 SoD... because at least from the announcements/preview seems appealing. Subs will fall again but then something else will come (Cata/Retail) to give them a boost again. Also, the question is... Ok, Legion did those numbers alone... If now we didn't have Classic/SOD/WotLK/Hardcore etc. , would all those people play DF just because no other alternative? My opinion is that they would not. And the bad thing is that DF is good game, shows some effort... yet isn't enough WoW-ish .

[@crudolol]

Why are you not subscribed to Bellular tho?

[@5p3cu10]

I dip in and out of WoW. I jumped back in a few weeks ago only to find I have essentially 4 variations of the game to pick from. I am actually suffering a little bit from analysis paralysis. WoW is not designed to be short term hop in and out. I played through wrath to WoD. But there is now a real choice. Do I pick say Classic, pour my time in only for it to collapse. Do I go retail which always seems to be a bit unstable? Or do I go to a different game entirely and risk starting again? It's a strange place to be and even stranger to be ungrateful of the choices

[@jackLoveX]

Since this graph isn't being presented to board members or investors, they're allowed to just completely make it up. It could literally just be a lie. LOL

[@GodlyNoodle]

M+ is more accessible and easy to grind, bring back 10 man raids

[@Anilomu]

Mythic+ being the most successful its ever been is CRAZY, its the same garbage fed to us since legion and they just made it more grindy by needing to get to Keystone 20 for Mythic gear. I guess some people are super easy to please.