World of Warcraft subscribers dip again

By Robert Purchese Published 4 August, 2011

Bigger-than-Firelands update coming 2011.

In October 2010, World of Warcraft reached 12 million subscribers. By the end of March 2011, that number decreased to 11.4 million.

Now Blizzard has revealed that, as of the end of June, that number had fallen again - down to 11.1 million subscribers worldwide.

Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime called this "a slight decrease" while speaking in an Activision-Blizzard earnings call last night (transcribed by Morningstar).

"In terms of subscriber growth around the world, what I would say is what we have seen is that subscribership [sic] tends to be seasonal and driven by content updates," said Morhaime. "As we are heading further away from an expansion launch, it's normal to seasoned declines where the team is currently working on our largest content update since Cataclysm and that will hit later this year."

"The team is currently working on our largest content update since Cataclysm and that will hit later this year."

Mike Morhaime, CEO, Blizzard

Morhaime's declaration that this upcoming content update will be the largest since Cataclysm means besting WOW's Rage of the Firelands patch 4.2, itself a considerable addition.

Blizzard registered a trademark this week protecting the name Mists of Pandaria. Could this be the name not of an expansion but this upcoming 2011 content update?

Since the end of June, when that 11.1 million subscriber number was recorded, Blizzard has launched third WOW expansion Cataclysm in China. "Concurrency levels increased substantially," noted Morhaime, before adding "there are more broadband users in China than in any other country in the world".

Blizzard also has plans to launch a Portuguese WOW client and service in Brazil this year. That's a territory that has "a lot of potential", said Morhaime. He added that Blizzard had enjoyed "great success" in Russia, too.

"There are other countries we're looking at beyond that as well but I don't have anything that I can talk about," Morhaime went on to reveal.

"Aside from promoting World of Warcraft in other regions, we're taking other steps to bring more players into the community," Morhaime added, pin-pointing the unlimited-time free trial that caps at character level 20.

"Since the launch of this program, we've seen a significant increase in new account creations," he said, with the caveat that it was "still too early to tell on conversions to subscribership [sic]".

"But I really believe that that is an important direction for us to continue lowering that barrier to trial and reaching new players around the world."

The new WOW patch will have to top this.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (34) Latest comment 10 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • LazyDan #1 10 months ago

    The mechanics of WoW have had their day. Back in 2005 pressing a button and watching a bunch on animations happen - including fireballs that magically track their way to the target and do the damage before they hit was all fine. In 2005 wandering around a beautiful, yet totally static world was fine. But today things like that are probably why people are starting to not return.

    We need an MMO now that plays like Magicka and Minecraft, in a world the size of Warcraft's.
    Edited by LazyDan at 04/08/11 @ 12:00

  • Vortextk #2 10 months ago

    I'm sure people are holding them to the coals but to apologize at all for this is freaking unfair.

    "I'm really sorry our game with 10x the subscribers of pretty much anything else in the (western atleast) world has dipped to 9x more, we'll try to do better". Come on.

  • Zozzilla #3 10 months ago

    They need to stop releasing content so quickly and let people catch the fuck up with what's already available! I like Firelands but I've barely touched it due to the fact I work for a living. If they just keep banging in new shit that only the most elitist jobless people can move straight on to of course they're gonna lose subs.

  • DanForinton #4 10 months ago

    @Zozzilla, you're going to need the spectacular chain of logic that leads you to that ludicrous conclusion (adding content = losing subscribers) coz I don't see it.

  • gribb #5 10 months ago

    Ding dong the witch is dead!

  • Gearskin #6 10 months ago

    I could never been drawn back into WoW. Not because I don't like it, but because there's zero chance of me finding low level players to properly quest with. It almost feels intimidating to walk around wearing cheap cloth when everyone elses cloth is buffed with AWESOMENESS, and level 80.

  • George-Roper #7 10 months ago

    Blizzard think they've made the game 'accessible' but actually they've made all content, pre-Raid 'worthless' because there's actually very little skill involved now. Skill or thought.

    Such a shame. In their grasping effort to attract as many people as possible, fuelled by pure greed given the already impressive sub figures they've turned WoW into a Milky Way bar. A tasty prospect but ultimately unfulfilling. Bring on Guild Wars 2! We need a breath of fresh air in the MMO genre!

  • MrChuckles #8 10 months ago

    I wish someone would release an MMO with all the polish and accessibility of WoW but made the combat strategic and deep. Pressing 2,2,3,2,2,3,4,2,2,3,2,2,2,3,4,5 for hours makes my brain turn to mush.

  • gingerjumper #9 10 months ago

    Biggest problem with WoW right now is that things feel stale. I've played since Beta and I know 8 other people who feel as the same way. It seems to be more about achievenments now and less about story. The raids (of which I have not cleared yet, i'm not part of a hardcore raiding guild) don't feel as fun and the sparkle just seems to have left the game.

    So many little things contribute to this. Like seeing the same in game objects used around the place eg mobs wearing armor we had as teir gear back in Burning Crusade (what 3 years ago!). GM's not knowing their own game e.g talk to a vendor to get x item and then when you do its not there and even WoW Wicki confirms it won't be). Add on's breaking every patch (I run 5 add on's and for 4.1 and 4.2 they have all broken despite not being broken for 2 years previously).

    My theory, for what it's worth is that Blizzard is focusing 100% on Diablo 3. Thats cool, it looks awesome and I will get it. Once D3 is out, the quality may/may not return but I wager the moment we know the release for Knights of the Old Republic, the D3 release will be annouced :)

  • Tyranix #10 10 months ago

    MrChuckles, meet Guild Wars 2.

    \o/

  • Dannyboy1100 #11 10 months ago

    "a slight decrease"
    Only worth 1.5 million every month...

  • chrisjm #12 10 months ago

    time for a gov bailout?!

  • Yuroko #13 10 months ago

    Down to 11.1 million. Mind Activision doesn't close the studio down.

  • Jolly_Armadillo #14 10 months ago

    Became too easy, accessible, handholdy(sic) - that's what put me off. Miss the original days of 40man raids and the top guilds having some legendary status about them.

  • Daeltaja #15 10 months ago

    Can't fathom how people who started playing in the beta are still playing to this day. Do they like re-hashed, recycled content?
    I played up until killing the Lich King, but I knew long in advance that I was sick and tired of the game and that killing him would be the day I quit. Practically everyone I knew or know, have quit the game long ago.

    Suprised the numbers haven't dropped by more by now, to be honest.

  • Kami #16 10 months ago

    "@Zozzilla, you're going to need the spectacular chain of logic that leads you to that ludicrous conclusion (adding content = losing subscribers) coz I don't see it."

    I'll help Zozzilla on this one, because it's been happening in Rift too.

    There is nothing wrong with adding top tier content for those who are serious raiders. That's absolutely fine. The issue for many comes when that becomes their main focus, their whole schtick. This was why Cataclysm had to redesign the main body of the world content - because after so many years, the game had become top-heavy. There was more weight at the endgame side than the rest of the game.

    The problem is, again, the content is either raiding or grindy rep grind, which is time consuming. And some people simply are bored of that, or their lives have changed, or they're just being picky. If you can't keep up with the pace of change, then a user will ask themselves if their subscription is worth it - even if the content is being added, if they can't get stuck in enough before something new comes along to undo their hard work, then they won't bother.

    A lot of guilds ended up doing this in the first chunk of Cataclysm - they focused on their guild level, rather than their raiding roster.

    And another problem WoW has also is that a lot of the content they add is either (a) a bit dull or (b) recycled. And under normal circumstances, most people wouldn't mind but Cataclysm seems to for some reason have soured the mixture a little, and people are being picky and taking note. Most boss tactics are "Remember (Boss A) and (Boss B)? This fight is like..." or "This fight uses the abilities of..." or "This boss is a souped-up version of". Once upon a time we loved the fights for being inventive and complex. Now they're just hoping we've forgotten some of the older content so they can redo it.

    There has to be a fine balance between the likes of Ulduar, which we rushed through, and ICC - which, in all fairness, dragged on for far too long. Players want to be able to see an end - why take a journey with no conclusion?

    But most of all, the lesson Blizzard - and Trion and other MMO developers as well - need to learn is that balance is key - and overwhelming your audience with too much can be as dangerous and toxic as underwhelming them with too little.

  • Ryboy #17 10 months ago

    "The team is currently working on our largest content update since Cataclysm and that will hit later this year."

    Just in case you missed it.

  • Softie2k #18 10 months ago

    People idolise classic too much.

    The trouble is with Blizzard, is that the WoW team has always remained the same size, they have about 4 animators, 4 art guys etc. That's why the expansions were always smaller than we felt we needed.

    WoW took a huge blow when ICC (Icecrown Citadel) was the biggest disappoint probably in the game. Cataclysm focussed on redoing leveling...(what!?) instead of creating level 85 content. The guild leveling system killed off guild hopping meaning it was hard for new guilds to blossom and after you've killed over 100 different raid bosses, the variations are just too small.

    Ulduar in Lich King was the peak (!!) and it's been downhill for a year and a half now.

  • bemaniac #19 10 months ago

    I got an email to try for 7 days again after firelands and signed into a new goblin character. Urgh so ugly angular and my god the quests were boring as it comes. I think even Aion seems to have more magic in its trial period than wow does.

  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #20 10 months ago

    The key problem with WoW's dev team is that they seem to panic each time the player base 'dips' during the holidays when quite honestly it's many due to players HAVING LIVES OUTSIDE THE GAME.

    This 'panic' seems to make the team illogically believe the needy 'QQ' fest of complaints from people to lazy to actually move their finger from one key to another otherwise known as the WoW forum's posts are actually true and continually mash down the game's complexity and requirement of planning and actual achievement down to to a fine dust.

    The game basically boils down to use your slightly older set of items to gain the only other set of deemed 'good' items in the game by just mashing mobs over and over again until the NPCs say you've got enough cookies to bride them to hand said items over, forget about the 99.9% of the game's content or even the whole 'getting to cap' bit all of it is meaningless as your Arbitrary number of Epeen Points (also known as Gear Score) requires to be at it's highest point possible before anyone (including the dev teams) will actually consider you worth interacting with - A point further pushed by the dev team handing out items to newer characters like candy with the same power as the older player base who had to work for it by spending 6 months in the dark screaming at their guild's raid group in the first place.

    WoW 'was' a MMORPG at some point but now with various 'for convenience' features has more in common with the Diablo series then Everquest and the numbers will continue to decrease when WoW's 'F2P successor' known as Diablo 3 comes out as heck that does the same game play basically ala the 'grind items to gain better items to smack your friends in the face with in whats known as 'PVP' these days, can be played completely 'solo' and helps the mass workforce of gold farmers earn their pocket money by legalizing the one thing that every MMO dev has been trying to combat for years now!

    Blizzard quit shooting yourself in the foot and actually understand that people like to be challenged and rewarded for it accordingly - by just shoehorning everyone into the current content you not only make older players feel like everything in pointless in the end but allow 'everyone and their dog' to be rewarded the same no matter what they do devalues the content.

    If every gamer 'needed' to be cuddled and 'helped' each time a game got 'too hard' for them - why are games like Demon Souls so highly recommended by gamers and the media?

  • rodpad #21 10 months ago

    Even though myself and my guild don't have these problems, they've simply made raiding too unforgiving and unfun for a large portion of players. Even the new dungeons fell under this catagory at the Cataclysm launch.

  • butler` #22 10 months ago

    @gingerjumper d3 is a completely different team

  • berelain #23 10 months ago

    For me the biggest problem with WoW - especially endgame - is the top-heavy focus on raids and large group instances, and the sheer randomness of it all. I haven't really played since Cataclysm, but I just got so bored of re-doing the same instances in the vague hope that the item I needed would drop, and that I'd win the roll on it, and that I'd then be deemed 'good enough' by the other players to join in with the Raids. Not that I had the several hours necessary to devote to battling through most of the raid content, of course.

    I appreciate its a fine task to balance the desires of the playerbase when you've got some people who don't have jobs and can just grind away at the game all day, considering themselves some kind of elite, and players who only have a couple of hours a week to devote to the game because of other commitments. But LOTRO does a pretty decent job of it - much of the high-end stuff is broken down into digestible chunks, so you don't need to spend 6 hours trawling through a raid in the hope of getting the item you want. Of course, LOTRO has the other problem in that there hasn't been enough new content released lately, so its a double-edged sword.

    The other big problem with WoW is the legions of die-hard fans who'll defend it to the bitter end, and the legions of MMO elitists who look down on the game because they consider their MMO to be 'better.'

  • Rajin #24 10 months ago

    @rodpad

    I disagree, with a balanced party(which is rare nowadays) they were fairly easy(besides one in stonecore i think, the range of his aoe attack was a bit strange) The problem is random party's with people not wnating to explain things to new players.

    The social aspect killed it for me, crossrealm makes everyone strangers and removes any bond players had with eachother in the world, mass guilds for the sake of the guildleader don't help integrate new players. Gearscore made content even more inaccesible for many casual players and so on. The game is killing itself steady and slowly, untill they release a new MMO or a Diablo 3 to start from a blank sheat.

    Quest content isn;t being updated either, they just suppose you'll redo the content from the other factions view or simply do it again.

    I still have faith in blizzard after the game Starcraft 2, which in my eyes is exactly what i wanted the sequel to be like.
    Edited by Rajin at 04/08/11 @ 14:42

  • Sharzam #25 10 months ago

    I got given a free 7 days the other day so i thought i might have a look again. The problem is that as people only care about your gear you cannot do anything.

    I was once really well geared and could join any raid i wanted but now iam not allowed to enter anyway and you cannot get a group for the 'lower' ones. Also on another of my toons who was doing heroics when i quit is now not allowed to do heroics, my gear was fine before for it but now because its not the current level of 'awesome' it means again i am nothing.

    Peoples obession with numbers and only the gear is what drove me away in the first place its the reason why i will not be re subbing also people are just not polite. Iam enjoying Rift much more it may be the same sort of game but it feels more dynamic but i do fear for it when the cross realm lfd comes in a couple days. Will the community the suffer as it did in WoW ?

  • Boab #26 10 months ago

    Nah the new dungeons that came with Cata were a joke to start off with. Blizz nerfed them in record time. Mendrottingfleshlol

  • Pirotic #27 10 months ago

    Staggering numbers still, I'd love to see a regional breakdown as I'm sure a huge proportion of the western players have quit but have been offset by the influx of new Chinese players who don't earn them anywhere near as much money due to their pay-per-session business model.

  • anomagnus #28 10 months ago

    If you check the servers on guild ox, activity on the top end, i.e. high end raiding, is still pretty consistent. Generally speaking the same guilds are at the top, as have been for years (even including mergers, disbands, etc). The same pool of players rule the roost on each server. Where blizz is losing subscribers, is on the bottom end. Theres fuck all to do in that game since blizz raised the bar on raiding. Now, don't get me wrong, i used to love raiding. During my time, my feral druid was the best geared druid on the server, and third highest geared overall. My guild ranked third for progress, and number 2 horde side.

    There is a place for high end gaming, and even as one of the lucky few to have a great heroic mode guild, i knew that there was nothing for those people who don't have 4 hours a night to dedicate to progress raiding to do. Before cata hit, i burned out, took a break, tried coming back as a casual, and it was dreadful. The new dungeons were exercises in pain. 3 hours on undermines was my last ever dungeon, and i broke away completely.

    It beggers belief that with so much expereince in MMOs, blizz cannot create difficulty tiers and progression paths for many different types of players.

    Now, some people will say, so what, its only 900k subs in the past year. And thats true, there are 11 millino left. BUt what happens if a tipping point is reached? Thats the problem that many start up mmos have. The more players they lose, the more players then quit, in a cycle.

    Blizz needs to get the next patch right, and mists of panderan turns out to be a real xpac, they had best get their thinking caps on how to motivate all levels of players, and not the 5% at the top.

  • MaxiSleep #29 10 months ago

    Cataclsym was just not fun.

    I used to enjoy the pug scene for Icecrown. Got 10/12 over the months and it was a nice atmosphere. Cataclysm really turned me off with its empahsis on rote learning and poor community. And the architectuel of levelling had one big dumb flaw, they stopped it a at 60 so you were in effect traveling back in time.

  • Zozzilla #30 10 months ago

    @Kami

    Thank you, I'm glad someone got my point without me having to explain every single damn thing.

  • Kami #31 10 months ago

    You are welcome Zozzilla.

    Content in an MMO is like water - too much of it and there is a risk people will drown. Too little - and they'll end up dehydrated and looking for water elsewhere.

  • Jon1292 #32 10 months ago

    Probably NCsofts strategy of "we're never gonna beat WoW, so lets make 101 Niche MMOs!" and lure them out that way.

  • ircaddicts #33 10 months ago

    and wow numbers will continue to go down faster and faster and theres nothing blizz can do to stop it. Espicaly when GW2 and Swtor come out. Anyone who thinks otherwise is clearly delusional

  • Dexter2015 #34 10 months ago

    I was playing WoW till last week and quit it deleted my 85 main and just got tired of it... All the new content we get is daily other lame raid and a lack buster quest....