The biggest, most venerated MMO has been haemorrhaging players of late, with a regular and steady drop in numbers. Blizzard has added micro-transactions to try make up for the loss of income, but it’s really starting to look like the MMO’s days at the top are numbered.
According to SuperData Research, World of Warcraft made just $93 million in April this year. While it;s still a ludicrous amount of money, it;s a far cry from the $204 million earned in in September last year; a drop of 54%.
Still, it seems those microtransactions are actually helping.
“Despite major declines in total revenues between September 2012 and April 2013, the game has seen an increasing conversion rate for the its current, add-on, extra-game store, and its microtransaction revenues have held pat overall,” they say.
“What it tells us is that dedicated WoW players are interested in-and will spend money on-microtransactions.”
Still, they’re not helping enough; subscriptions are down and Blizzard would have to turn over half of the current free-to-players in to micro-transaction junkies to make the sort of money it used to. I don’t actually know anybody who still plays WoW, to be honest.
I think the era of the traditional subscription-model MMO is near its end; which makes The Elder Scrolls Online\s monthly sub a curious thing.
Last Updated: September 12, 2013
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| was reviewed on PC | |
Admiral Chief of Rivia
September 12, 2013 at 14:01
Don’t know anyone as well who still plays this…
John on trial
September 12, 2013 at 14:33
Neither do I
Sageville
September 12, 2013 at 14:35
I have a mates who still do… they are weird though.
Admiral Chief of Rivia
September 12, 2013 at 14:02
Anyone else seeing silly animated fleshboob flash banner on the right? Tynon?
WTF is this???
Devourer of Small Bunnies
September 12, 2013 at 14:04
*cough* AdBlock *Cough*
Admiral Chief of Rivia
September 12, 2013 at 14:04
Never used to be problem, just on this article.
Serves me right for clicking on a WoW thing
Her Highness the Hipster
September 12, 2013 at 14:21
apparently it’s google adsense. it reflects what you search for. everyone in the office laughed at me because i got ads to find single women 0-O
RincemySniperKittEH0-O
September 12, 2013 at 14:28
And why AWESOMENESS popped up on mine! BOOM!
Alien Emperor Trevor
September 12, 2013 at 14:35
You search for awesomeness? I live it.
John on trial
September 12, 2013 at 14:35
Oh snap
Sageville
September 12, 2013 at 14:36
Pffft, those are my awesomeness ads, I have a surplus so I sell the rest online to noobs and soulless minions.
Admiral Chief of Rivia
September 12, 2013 at 14:38
HA
John on trial
September 12, 2013 at 14:35
I know I’m getting old when mine is showing furniture ads
Alien Emperor Trevor
September 12, 2013 at 14:35
Does a wheelchair count as furniture?
John on trial
September 12, 2013 at 14:36
Haha. Not on my ads.
That Tall Twit
September 12, 2013 at 14:40
Telkom adverts here *oh the horror*
John on trial
September 12, 2013 at 14:40
There are few things worse.
Admiral Chief of Rivia
September 12, 2013 at 14:41
Same…..WTF??
Admiral Chief of Rivia
September 12, 2013 at 14:38
LULZ
SaintsRowLee
September 12, 2013 at 14:40
I get Telkom business. Ye Gods I need to spice up my searches at work!
Admiral Chief of Rivia
September 12, 2013 at 14:41
Same here. Also, now HP laptops. WHY???
John on trial
September 12, 2013 at 14:41
We get DELL laptops. Of course I dropped mine a week after I got it.
Admiral Chief of Rivia
September 12, 2013 at 14:42
Accidental damage and theft protection FTW.
Also Dell ftw.
Also, Fail John FAAAAIL
John on trial
September 12, 2013 at 14:44
We also have insurance, was still crap to sit without a laptop for a while when it went in for repairs.
RincemySniperKittEH0-O
September 12, 2013 at 14:28
So… Fleshboob… Those damn ION’s!
Admiral Chief of Rivia
September 12, 2013 at 14:39
Hah, no, cheap MMO, and hells to the no do I search for F2P low budget MMO.
And now showing me HP Laptops?? Dafuq?
RincemySniperKittEH0-O
September 12, 2013 at 14:43
I’m getting Nedbank… I’ve never searched for them EVA. Not even in the other 60000 past lives me or my horde of Chinese manufacturing children have had.
Unavengedavo (aka. Frik)
September 12, 2013 at 14:36
This?
Admiral Chief of Rivia
September 12, 2013 at 14:43
Wow, not THAT provocative, more covered, but yes, the same blerrie game!
Sageville
September 12, 2013 at 14:47
Some classic nipple armor right there.
Alien Emperor Trevor
September 12, 2013 at 14:52
Female rogue armour, makes cutting through glass easier on chilly nights.
Johan du Preez
September 12, 2013 at 14:55
I use adblock …
B3yond
September 12, 2013 at 14:04
I still play WoW and love it 😀
Theo Steenekamp
September 12, 2013 at 14:13
Amen brother!
Tarisma
September 12, 2013 at 14:07
Also wildstar is going the sub route which is strange
That Tall Twit
September 12, 2013 at 14:13
I used too play WoW, then a took a high exchange rate to the knee.
Theo Steenekamp
September 12, 2013 at 14:13
Wildstar also going for the Sub model
Matterdor
September 12, 2013 at 17:27
It also offers a way for players to buy game time with gold. That will entice more players.
Lardus-Respect the beard
September 12, 2013 at 14:19
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA take that Pandas!!
Unavengedavo (aka. Frik)
September 12, 2013 at 14:22
I don’t think its the Sub model that is the problem, they have dumbed down the game so much and the end game content is boring.
Hammersteyn
September 12, 2013 at 14:22
I would play WOW. But I cant run around with a LMG like a do on Auraxis.
Sageville
September 12, 2013 at 14:29
Bad math time:
93 Million / $15 per month = at most 6.2 million subscribers in August 2013 (less due to microtransactions income)
Reportedly 7.7 million subscribers in July 2013
So that’s 1.5 million subscribers saying “fuck this game” in a single month.
So it seems the prophesized “WoW killer” turned out to in fact be “WoW” itself.
Unavengedavo (aka. Frik)
September 12, 2013 at 14:31
I think Blizzard stopped caring about WoW and are more focused on Titan.
They probably hope that if they make WoW kak enough, then more people will flock to Titan.
Sageville
September 12, 2013 at 14:32
Titan is a myth!
Well it feels like it.
Mark Treloar
September 13, 2013 at 07:46
They did say they were redesigning the whole game (Titan) so at this point it may never even release.
ToshZA
September 12, 2013 at 14:29
Stopped playing this 2 years ago. Haven’t missed it one bit.
SaintsRowLee
September 12, 2013 at 14:31
What? You do not like slaughtering 75 wild pigs to find 6 livers? AND YOU CALL YOURSELF A GAMER????
Ryanza
September 12, 2013 at 14:30
As you see the gaming industry moving into an online DRM digital micro transaction era, you will find people getting fed up of jumping through hoops just to play a game.
After playing Diablo 3 on PC with so much lag, unplayable for a single player game i should add, that i decided to never support Activision again.
These publishers need to cater to us and not us catering to them. So if they can not cater to my DRM free needs they should not expect my support. Thank you, CD Projekt RED for your DRM FREE version of The Witcher 3, I will support your games, can’t wait for the DRM FREE version of Cyber Punk.
Fuck you Activision, Fuck you EA, Fuck you Ubisoft. I will not support your games unless through pirating, seeing as that’s your main excuse.
SaintsRowLee
September 12, 2013 at 14:32
Currently loving Diablo 3 on console…
John on trial
September 12, 2013 at 14:36
I’m really considering getting it. Then I’ll have 5 PS games.
Ryanza
September 12, 2013 at 14:37
because there is non of that bullshit on consoles that there are on PCs.
enjoy your offline mode and lag free experience. I am not spending more on the same shit just to get what i wanted in the 1st place.
Sageville
September 12, 2013 at 14:38
No RMA on console….
Ryanza
September 12, 2013 at 14:45
Never cared for RMA. Who pays real money for in game items, when you paid for the game in the 1st place. Makes no sense to me, like lagging my ass off in a single player game still doesn’t make sense to me.
John on trial
September 12, 2013 at 14:45
Single Player lagging is a bitch.
Johan du Preez
September 12, 2013 at 14:58
+1 not much else to say …
Kromas
September 12, 2013 at 14:38
They sent me a 7 day sub to test out the new patch last weekend. I updated the game,logged in once and went back to DayZ.
Admiral Chief of Rivia
September 12, 2013 at 14:39
What a trooper!
Kromas
September 12, 2013 at 14:40
Well … I logged in … noticed my messed up ui and forgot it takes 24-48 hours to get my mods the way I wanted it. 😛
Admiral Chief of Rivia
September 12, 2013 at 14:41
No idea what you mean there, but glad you jamming a real game!
Sageville
September 12, 2013 at 14:43
Oh I remember those: DPS meter, button mods, boss mods etc etc.
That Tall Twit
September 12, 2013 at 14:44
& omen threat meter :O
Kromas
September 12, 2013 at 14:47
And whatever flavour of DKP mod your guild decides to use this month 😛
Sageville
September 12, 2013 at 14:49
Ugh, all those bad memories are comming back now….
Kromas
September 12, 2013 at 14:51
My Boomkin is running around with a Hand of Raggy and paladins still hate me for it 😛
Sageville
September 12, 2013 at 14:52
Clearly a Hunter weapon if I recall, everything was a hunter weapon…
Dosanator
September 13, 2013 at 10:20
Kromas, not to sound like a typical online gamer, but you are a noob 😉 Try not being crap and get curse client, it controls your addons for you.
Kromas
September 13, 2013 at 11:19
Curse only gets you the mods and I used it for ages. But unlike you, who most likely just downloads a mod pack I actually customize and design my own mods/UI and therefore it takes me a lot longer to get it the way I want it. It is the difference between your HP pre-built pc and my custom,performance tweaked gaming rig. 😛
Craig Henry
September 12, 2013 at 14:42
I don’t have a problem with the subscription model, at least with he traditional model where everybody was on the same playing field. I do have a problem with these new free to play games, where whoever has the most money can buy the best equipment, wheres the fairness in that? pretty lame and pointless to play such games, GW2 etc where some wally can take daddy’s credit card and buy the best gear in the game that you will never come close to.
Sageville
September 12, 2013 at 14:46
In all fairness in GW2 everyone can get Max stats items through normal play, the microtransactions can give you different skins (Item looks). So it’s not play to win.
At least thats how I remember it being last I played.
That Tall Twit
September 12, 2013 at 14:52
That is how I remember it too.
Johan du Preez
September 12, 2013 at 14:59
And its still like that …
Rags
September 12, 2013 at 14:47
http://www.allmystery.de/i/tb078f5_GrumpyCatGood.jpg
loftie
September 12, 2013 at 15:09
I still play WOW
loftie
September 12, 2013 at 15:10
and I still love it lol. Great to run around with buddies and do randoms shit
Guest
September 12, 2013 at 15:11
Ah and then there was EVE.
Kromas
September 12, 2013 at 15:14
Then there was eve.
giddieon
September 12, 2013 at 19:36
If you think about it though how long was the game out for and how many millions did they make off of it… I think hearthstone is meant to fill this profit gap until they can get to a new World of war craft…
IF they give a new and huge over haul to the UO and graphics I think when they do release a new one.. it is going to be huge… at first but not have the legs like the first wow did…
Estian Hough
September 12, 2013 at 19:50
Make the game free to play if you want to see an explosion of new players. Though – I rate something like that would be a temporary fix.
Brian Murphy
September 12, 2013 at 20:23
I stopped playing a few weeks ago, just got tired of having to research fights and so on. My guild is resisting my efforts, however. I let my account expire, and now they want to buy me more gametime ugh. Not really sure if I’m going to let them, I can keep in touch with Vent, so it’s not a huge deal to me.
Natty Dave
September 12, 2013 at 23:31
I think that I would like to play it again sometimes, but then I remember cataclysm, pandas, and wotlk. I don’t believe it’s the hard core fans still playing, they are the ones leaving because they can’t stand getting noob proofed, the constant dumbing down to appeal to a mass audience of casual’s and to pick up the left over subs from city of villains. they ran a good thing into the ground, was only a matter of time.
Dosanator
September 13, 2013 at 10:53
Could you be more specific please? I have read this argument many times, about how the game is dumbed down? They have made the game more accessible, that is for sure.
Vanilla And The Burning Crusade = Top 5% of the player base got to enjoy end game content
Wow today = End game content available to everyone ( easier difficulty accommodating casual gamer’s), Hard mode end game content ( Harder difficulty with greater reward, still accommodating the top 5% of the player base)
Could you please point out what has changed?
Also, feel free to post a link showing us, how from vanilla to Mop you magically jumped to 2.4 K rating in pvp. < excuse the sarcasm, but your cut and past argument deserved a slight troll.
On a Side note, I am not a Blizz/wow Fanboi, I do believe the game has flaws, and I do believe that some things were better in TBC, I just get frustrated when people have cut and past argument, where they don't actually have facts or use logic.
Natty Dave
September 16, 2013 at 19:33
don’t get to butt hurt dude, I never insisted that what I said was anything more than my opinion on the game, why I, me, and myself believe that is the reason for the decline of the game, and falling sub numbers. and what does my pvp rating have to do with anything?. It’s comical that you would sit and try and get all snotty with me, arguing about wow, but then you throw in at the end that your not fanboi? what do you call it than, nut hugging?
I played wow for more years than I care to admit, started with bc and played through til mop and have 5 lvl 90’s, tanks and dd’s, I have raided, done lfr, played av when people still wanted to win, I have had pvp tokens, my pvp mounts were from back in the day when it ment something to have them not just because I hit the cap and needed to unload some points, I have paid my sub fee, an I have the right to form my own opinion; I am no longer active in the games community because frankly, that is the worst thing about the game, it’s player base, I do not care what cut and paste argument your accusing me of making, it’s no secret that blizz wanted to make wow more accessible to casual’s, they used cata to make leveling easier for the cry babies who can’t grind out exp, they made instances idiot proof and people still fail so they now reward not just failure, but repeat failures who can’t get their shit together are over and over given buffs to make it easier, the timer for wsg leads to one cap wins because one side caps and turtles the rest of the fight while everyone else points the finger at each other and talks shit about how it’s everyone else’s fault they lost, welfare epics left and right, what factual proof do you honestly need, just play the game for 10 minutes and it’s clear to see. Playing the game is near impossible as well when all of trade chat is trolled by middle school children and /b/tard rejects who still think the word anal is the funniest thing in the world, the guilds are full of snot nosed children or some sort of laughable relationship where there is a female guild leader followed by a swarm of virgins awaiting her beck and call, idiots on vent who think that wow is the place to hash out relationship problems with their parents, it’s a damn circus
Natty Dave
September 27, 2013 at 00:28
first off, if you’re trying to troll me, you did a piss poor job of it, just like how you ended your wow defense arguement with “i am not a fanboi” yet your arguing with my opinion of a game and asking for factual proof to back up my opinion, when it is just that, my opinion of the game to date from the last time I played it some 6 months ago, to the way it was when I started playing which was back in bc.
I was never a hardcore wow player, I got that out of my system with ffxi, I went to wow because it was notoriously laughed at for being stupid easy but fun, and I just wanted to have fun playing, not have to put in so much effort for little to no reward, and that in its own right is why wow has always been a dumbed down mmo, where are the notorious mobs with 24-48 spawns with a still more so impossible drop rate, some times just getting the mob claim was it’s own victory, and getting the drop was a big deal, where as wow has welfare epics, no real work really has to go into having a well geared toon, you just show up until it’s your turn for the drop, and they keep making it dumber, giving terribad groups stat boosts to beat mobs because you know, you couldn’t do the first 5 times, but keep trying because you really deserve it after spending all that time sitting in the lfr qeue twiddling your thumbs and talking shit in trade chat. and the harder raids you speak of hardly account for much when the majority of players are just fodder for aoe dmg mitigation, and the only real reason those players in the “top 5%” is because they are ones who bought their way into heroics using pvp gear like assbags and then stand around contributing little while others get them 1337 gear drops, and collect points towards more welfare epics so they can be as narcissistic as they want to be and believe that they worked really hard to get the gear they have. Wow has become a dress up game with dungeons you can do on the side, and the community of trolls and children reflects strongly on the direction the game has taken
Masty
September 13, 2013 at 07:31
Anyone wana buy my wow account? lvl 90 warrior + lock. cd keys en alles.
Disclaimer: The game is shit.
UltimateNinjaPandaDudeGuy
September 13, 2013 at 10:40
I just don’t want to pay a monthly really…
I personally prefer The Secret World. EPIC games that one!
Also DOTA2 dominates my life…
InsanityFlea
September 13, 2013 at 13:29
It’s all just so boring. It became terribly boring with Pandaria.
Max West
September 20, 2013 at 08:32
If any one still plays wow here is probably the best online leveling guide around http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GpLL8S4r5A!
Ace530
May 1, 2014 at 04:51
The pc itself is doomed, an iPad a macbook and a ps4 is all one needs!