The Ebb and Flow of WoW

As predicted by anyone with a pulse, WoW subscription numbers (fuzzy definition as you’ll see below) are up after the launch of Warlords of Draenor.

World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet game room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.

Warlords of Draenor had a day-one sell-through of 3.3 million copies. I believe that includes pre-orders, etc. To me the 3.3 million number is telling. The next sentence is wild and highly speculative without any claim to accuracy. I think 3.3 million is probably the rough number of North American players who can be considered part of WoW’s ‘core’ group of players, with probably 1 million of those drifting off late in the expansion cycle.

Let’s evaluate why their numbers surged.

People like new content. When there’s no new content subs go down. When there’s new content people come back and play. This isn’t indicative of a game succeeding or failing. This is indicative of people wanting something fresh to play.

Orcs are cooler than pandas. Warcraft hearkening back to its roots, pandering (not pandaing) to its lore and fans, works best.

The MMOs launched this year have sucked. While some of the MMOs (ArcheAge) had redeeming qualities, and others none at all (Wildstar), the collective result is a resounding “Blah!” People are/were desperate for something to play. WoD was the easy place to throw $60 for a month of something to do. It’s a SAFE bet. Few people are going to pay that box price and first month’s sub and feel cognitive dissonance. If anything, people are going to play WoW longer now because it rescued them from a state of suck.

Haters gonna hate. The “stop liking what I don’t like” crowd will roll on through. Ultimately nothing changes. WoW is successful. Business models are irrelevant. Good games sell. Good games retain players. Whether it’s 1, 3, 8 or 10 million players — it’s more than most games can say they hold on to longer than 3 months.

Now, promise me none of you will be surprised when WoW’s numbers fall in 3 months.

  • Another important factor in the surge; an expansion is a clear time to jump in. Individuals and groups have a common point to come back. This is a major factor in the spike. If WoW instead just did steady monthly content updates, you of course would never have a moment where a whole ton of people all decided to come back at the same time.

    So in that regard the big expansion every few years generates a spike and an easy PR release.

    But if the business model is about retaining people month to month (sub model), getting that spike is only half the battle (it does great work in terms of reattaching social hooks as guilds/groups return en-mass); if most leave after consuming the basic content, it’s perhaps not as great a model as one that is more sustainable.

    Your last point, about the rest of the MMO space being down, is also a major factor; bit of a perfect storm for WoW yet again. I think it’s interesting that FFXIV has its own expansion in early 2015; almost right in time to give those who are once again done with WoW something (more) to do.

  • I also don’t remember this much “Good Vibe” about the game when Mists came out. Seemed to be a state of unhappiness then that doesn’t exist now.

    Overall the game seems to be getting a very positive reaction to their game changes, which kind of surprised me.

    Maybe it was there before and I just don’t remember it.

  • “Warlords of Draenor had a day-one sell-through of 3.3 million copies. I believe that includes pre-orders, etc”

    I’m not sure this is true. People have been buying WoD for months, but these numbers were billed as copies sold “within 24 hours of launch”

  • I can tell you that the initial leveling experience is infinitely better than it was in MoP. The inclusion of garrisons helps tremendously and everything flows much better. I’m sure the setting doesn’t hurt either but i have no point of reference since I’ve only been playing for a year now.

  • The garrisons feature is pretty cool. I must admit the early stages of actually building your garrison feels somewhat Warcraft 3 like. You literally start with a hill near some trees. They had a very good idea for the early bottleneck quests. There is no tagging in the early quests. As long as you hit the mob even if someone else is fighting it you get credit. (They even have to split the coin with you!). This only continues somewhat after your garrison is built. Named quest guys with a ! in their frame don’t get tagged either. Also rares don’t get tagged. Everyone who participates gets loot.

  • It is the same reason why Olive Garden periodically alters their menu, something new to try, not to challenging, reasonably palatable.

    It makes good financial sense.

  • I’m sure that 3.3 million number Is mostly pre-orders. Pre-orders have to count as sales on launch day. There are actually pretty major fines for selling a movie or game before release day. WoD came out this month so if people were buying it for months they were definitely pre-ordering it.

  • Keen, while I agree with the overwhelming majority of statements and accurate commentary you make on your website, we have to agree to disagree a bit on this one. My reason is that while you are making a fairly accurate statement based on past performance as a guideline, you have not yet yourself played this expansion. You are making a statement based on empirical data, that while overall is accurate, I don’t think we will see a huge drop in subs that you seem to be predicting. While it is a forgone conclusion to state that numbers will drop in the next couple months, and certainly within the next year as more MMOs come out, I do not think we will see a huge drop in numbers as we have the last two expansion packs. I have played WoW since beta and honestly the polish and “feel” of this expansion pack are like nothing I have felt in playing the game. I beta’d and played cata and while I liked the look of someof the zones, I quickly lost interest. MoP was a very low point for me and it felt like Blizzard was pandering to kids to try and increase rapidly dwindling sub #s. Panda’s? Seriously? I feel they really knocked it out of the park with this expansion. As you said, good games sell and better ones retain players. I guess time will be the ultimate decider.

  • Archeage became a 3 monther purely from the infestation of hacking/botting and exploiting.

    There was a recent exploit that allowed you to use your Apex(cost 10 dollar) just before entering a portal and it would not dissapear from your inventory, but you would receive the credits.Thousands of people exploited this so heavily! They bought some of the most difficult to obtain gear and only had their Credits removed.The best part ? The exploit was KNOWN and operational since RELEASE.A select few have been exploiting this for months.

    The games economy is utterly destroyed, player power levels are totally unbalanced.Many have left , as have I.

    THe worst part is, the game was soo good, but so badly managed.

  • So just to add, the point of my first post,Archeage did have redeeming qualities, but it is invalid at this point, sadly.