Blizz announces subscription loss

[Shadowwolf]

Orig Article: http://www.curse.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-news/956087.aspx

During today's Activision Blizzard earnings call, World of Warcraft and its expansion Cataclysm were two very hot topics. Listeners asked a number of questions related to the game, more than any other title or franchise in the publisher's stable.

Of note, World of Warcraft's subscriber base has reached pre-Cataclysm levels, according to Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard Entertainment. He then later stated an actual number, with subscriptions at the end of March clocking in at right around 11.4 million.

That's down by about 5% from the announced 12 million mark late last year. Interestingly enough, that was right before Cataclysm released. In fact, it's actually lower than the milestone reached in 2008 with the release of Wrath of the Lich King.

But one important thing to point out, and Mr. Morhaime touched on this as well, is that World of Warcraft's subscriber base does not change linearly. It fluctuates based on content consumption, which players seem to be doing a whole lot of -- at a more rapid pace -- with Cataclysm. "Subscriber levels have decreased faster than previous expansions," he said.

Surprising? Not really. We have to remember that when these numbers were pulled, Cataclysm was in a bit of a lull. The expansion had been out for close to four months, and most of its content had been consumed by a large percentage of the player base -- aside from heroic raids.

Plus the strongest competitor to the game so far -- RIFT -- launched at the beginning of March. This no doubt pulled many away from Azeroth, even if only temporarily, to explore a new world.

It will be interesting to see what kind of lasting impact this faster content consumption, along with RIFT, have on the game's subscriber base. We'll probably hear more about this during the next earnings call.

It amazes me that even looking at the numbers directly, they STILL do not admit to losing people because of the drastic game changes and will excuse it in any other way but that. This far in and the progress sites still only show about 10% of the WoW playerbase having moved through half of the raid content. The June quarterly earnings numbers will show even more because thats when a lot of time cards and 3mo subscriptions will expire.



Numbers dont lie.

[Kothnok]

The expansion had been out for close to four months, and most of its content had been consumed by a large percentage of the player base -- aside from heroic raids.

(emphasis mine)

This far in and the progress sites still only show about 10% of the WoW playerbase having moved through half of the raid content.

(emphasis mine)

Seems to me that Blizz isn't the only ones not realizing that "quickly consuming content" isn't the problem.