Home Gaming WoW, where'd everyone go?

WoW, where'd everyone go?

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Remember when “everyone” was playing World of Warcraft?   Well, things have changed for Activision Blizzard.

In fact, WoW has lost 1.3 million subscribers according to a press release on Wednesday.

“… During the quarter, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft® remained the #1 subscription-
based MMORPG in the world with more than eight million subscribers, although the game saw
declines of approximately 1.3 million subscribers, mainly from the East, but in the West as
well.
” 

But don’t worry, they still managed to scrape by with revenue of $1.32 billion.  I suppose they will make do.

After hitting their peak at the end of 2010 with 12 million subscribers, WoW has since been hemorrhaging players.  In fact, it’s getting so bad that WoW has actually returned to player numbers it hasn’t seen since early 2007.  

Remember 2007?  That was the year Jackie Selebi was arrested and SA won the Rugby World Cup!  Last time WoW was at these numbers, Mbeki was running South Africa and no one believed a black man could become president of the US of A. 

Last Updated: May 9, 2013

72 Comments

  1. Admiral Chief Combat Engineer

    May 9, 2013 at 11:23

    I still remember that final, what a feeling! Go Bokke!

    OLE!

    Reply

    • Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

      May 9, 2013 at 11:26

      Oleeee ole ole ole!

      Reply

  2. Dean

    May 9, 2013 at 11:24

    It was inevitable. After almost 9 years running guys are going to expect more than pandas.

    Reply

  3. Admiral Chief Combat Engineer

    May 9, 2013 at 11:24

    I was just shocked to hear that there are still so many ppl addicted :

    Reply

    • TriangularRoom

      May 9, 2013 at 11:28

      I guess there will still be those die hards who don’t wanna give up… especially after all the money they’ve thrown at the game…

      Reply

      • Admiral Chief Combat Engineer

        May 9, 2013 at 11:36

        Nice to see you comment!

        Reply

    • Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

      May 9, 2013 at 11:29

      Some people just can’t get enough.

      Reply

      • Matthew Holliday

        May 9, 2013 at 11:43

        Gotta catch em all?

        Reply

        • Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

          May 9, 2013 at 11:51

          Hahahaha. ROFL….

          Although I really would play a pokemon MMO!

          Reply

  4. Ultimo_Cleric_N7

    May 9, 2013 at 11:25

    Free to play is imminent.

    Reply

    • umar bastra

      May 9, 2013 at 11:27

      100% agreed, FTP is the way of the future

      Reply

      • Admiral Chief Combat Engineer

        May 9, 2013 at 11:36

        What about HTTP?

        Reply

        • umar bastra

          May 9, 2013 at 11:38

          Hmmm I prefer P2P

          Reply

          • Admiral Chief Combat Engineer

            May 9, 2013 at 11:40

            HTTPS to keep the scum out

          • umar bastra

            May 9, 2013 at 11:42

            Much more secure yes, Keep em cookies safe 😉

          • Ultimo_Cleric_N7

            May 9, 2013 at 11:46

            What about CNA? Or maybe even ESPN?

          • umar bastra

            May 9, 2013 at 11:54

            See KFC is also a viable option then but then you have to deal with the ANC … so ya, tough decisions 😛

          • Dean

            May 9, 2013 at 12:01

            Would worry more about the CIA and KGB

          • umar bastra

            May 9, 2013 at 12:07

            Don’t forget MIB! 🙂

        • Weanerdog

          May 9, 2013 at 12:24

          I prefer B.A.C.O.N

          Reply

          • Illuchne Mancera

            May 9, 2013 at 16:48

            As long as it’s not COD!

  5. Sir Rants-a-Lot Llew

    May 9, 2013 at 11:26

    Wait, they lost 1.3million subs yet still make $1.3Bill!?!? Sheesh. Wish I’d invented WoW now.

    Reply

    • Kobus Nel

      May 15, 2013 at 11:06

      Probably would have done a better job at it too.

      Reply

  6. Darryn Cameron-Gunn

    May 9, 2013 at 11:27

    i am on of those 1millon

    Reply

    • Illuchne Mancera

      May 9, 2013 at 16:39

      So am I @facebook-615272994:disqus , so am I… I’m sure my 7 chars between lvl 85 and 90 will miss me… but I’ll survive

      Reply

  7. That Tall Twit

    May 9, 2013 at 11:28

    I stopped playing when Mists came out.

    Reply

  8. Axon1988

    May 9, 2013 at 11:28

    • Sageville

      May 9, 2013 at 11:51

      Yeah, the one thing I did miss was the people, during our prime, our guild “Flame of Anduril” had such a good bunch of peeps, nothing seemed impossible. We still keep in touch on facebook and I honestly do miss those days.

      Mind you, I don’t miss the guild politics and loot drama.

      Reply

      • Axon1988

        May 9, 2013 at 11:56

        I have one thing to say about your comment sir:

        I have never played WOW online before. 😐

        Reply

        • Sageville

          May 9, 2013 at 12:13

          mmmkay….

          Reply

  9. AndriyP

    May 9, 2013 at 11:33

    It was a lot of fun when it was wacraft3 lore…but with all these new things they making its just not the same to most of the players that love WC3 thats why i stopped playing anyways

    Reply

  10. umar bastra

    May 9, 2013 at 11:34

    Where do you go, oh oh eh oh
    I wanna know, oh oh eh oh
    Where do you go, oh oh eh oh…
    I wanna know !!!!!!!

    Reply

    • Trevor Davies

      May 9, 2013 at 11:57

      Epic movie! *bob head side to side*

      Reply

      • umar bastra

        May 9, 2013 at 12:19

        Yay, some one recognized this awesome movie 🙂 !

        Reply

    • Jean du Plessis

      May 10, 2013 at 11:22

      Sure was!!

      Reply

  11. Sageville

    May 9, 2013 at 11:40

    I did Wow pretty hardcore back in the day for about 5 years, I bailed before cataclysm.

    After a while you realize the “Chase the Carrot” model will never end, always having to get the max / best-in-slot gear becomes tediious, all those awesome items you spent months working towards become rubbish and are eventually De’d or tossed because the new expansion makes the stats useless.

    The awe I had previously encountered when discovering new places was gone. All that was left was the grind. I doubt WoW will be able to attract a new customer base, today the wow graphics are sooo dated and frankly look ancient when compared to a free-to-play MMO like Guild Wars 2.

    Still they did milk the world, $1.3 Billion is still not that shabby.

    Reply

  12. Unavengedavo

    May 9, 2013 at 11:50

    And everyone was forever talking about the “WoW killer”… Star Wars: The old Republic was the last one that was seen as a potential candidate, but it also failed.

    In the en the only thing that could Kill WoW was WoW!!!

    Reply

    • umar bastra

      May 9, 2013 at 11:52

      Guild wars has much more potential than SW

      Reply

      • Unavengedavo

        May 9, 2013 at 11:54

        Well personally I want to see how Elder scrolls Online does 😀

        Reply

        • umar bastra

          May 9, 2013 at 11:55

          The show stopper, that game is gonna be massive though! I just hope it’s not buggy lol

          Reply

          • Unavengedavo

            May 9, 2013 at 11:57

            And lives up to expectations!

    • Natty Dave

      May 9, 2013 at 14:19

      it was a matter of time, but yeah, that was it, wow has gone the way of the halo franchise has, at least to me, when it was new, it was really something special you would wait in long lines, overnight in bad weather to be the first to get the next one, now it’s just another bargain bin space filler at any department store, the shine is gone and what were left with is a shell full of memories of how things used to be.

      Reply

  13. Sageville

    May 9, 2013 at 12:00

    A Raiding Highlight homage to my ex-wow cadres

    Reply

    • Shaun De Hoog

      May 9, 2013 at 13:14

      WoW BC…now THAT was WoW… 🙂

      Reply

      • Melasco

        May 9, 2013 at 14:27

        Agreed, no MMO or other WOW XPAC comes close to BC. It had the right mix of everything and enough new stuff to be awesome.

        Reply

    • Melasco

      May 9, 2013 at 14:25

      Hehe awesome. I was MT for Affliction, but looks like our old website is gone so I can’t post our Illidan kill shot here 🙁

      WOW kinda lost me after BC. I’ve posted this before somewhere on this site in the past, but to me WOW BC was the pinnacle of MMO’s, no game has been able to come even close since then. I played WOTLK for exactly 6 weeks, Cata for 1 month, and I won’t play WOW again.

      But, hats off to Blizzard, no other online game’s been able to hook me in like vanilla WOW and BC. I’ve tried every MMO out there since WOW, and I can’t manage more than a couple of weeks then I quit….

      Now it’s Mass Effect and Battlefield…

      Reply

      • Shaun De Hoog

        May 9, 2013 at 14:39

        Makes two of us…SWTOR, Rift, GW2, etc…none of them got me hooked like WoW. 🙁
        I’ll have to dig around for my screenshots, our site is gone too. Maybe I can find some old guildies that have screenies lying around…

        Reply

        • Admiral Chief Combat Engineer

          May 9, 2013 at 14:43

          Still wanna play SWTOR though :/

          Prolly just because KOTOR1&2 got me hooked 🙂

          Reply

          • Shaun De Hoog

            May 9, 2013 at 15:03

            Only reason to play SWTOR is for the story…gameplay and classes are horrid, compared to other MMO’s.
            I’d much rather play Rift or GW2…but give it a go, maybe the story will be enough for you 🙂

          • Admiral Chief Combat Engineer

            May 9, 2013 at 15:07

            I really only want to know how the story pans out, since KOTOR 1 & 2 had me solid

            Tx

    • Darryn Cameron-Gunn

      May 9, 2013 at 18:02

      Indeed BC raiding was my highlight had so much fun couldnt wait to get home from work to play 😀

      Reply

  14. Shaun De Hoog

    May 9, 2013 at 13:06

    Every expansion after BC got worse and worse, and the last changes they made with the talent trees and how each class works, sealed it for me. If it weren’t for the major changes they made, I probably would have still been playing, whether I had to pay or not…

    Reply

  15. JackSparro

    May 9, 2013 at 13:45

    World of warcraft is an awesome game, what put me off as a cash-strapped gamer in South Africa was the monthly fees and the crazy amount of updates the game required every odd week, that was the days of capped internet

    Reply

  16. Natty Dave

    May 9, 2013 at 14:06

    it’s not the game so much as the player community, nothing but a bunch of trolls and whiners; I used to really enjoy the game a lot, played since bc, but anymore you can’t log in with out hearing a bunch of ignorant kids talking shit and trolling trade, making racist comments and starting arguments of grammar and who has the highest ilvl(epeen) no one the horde side on my battle group even tries anymore, they just show up and bot their way to welfare honor, to buy pvp gear so they get their ilvl high enough to join lfr and sponge off the work of others, get more welfare epics

    I have an active sub to wow but just don’t want to log in anymore, I would love to smoke a bowl and fly around on dragons and kill shit, talk to friends and have fun, buts it’s not a reality anymore, when everyone is a jerk, the rest of the game becomes more of a chore to be a part of.

    Reply

    • Admiral Chief Combat Engineer

      May 9, 2013 at 14:42

      So you say the community killed it for you?
      Sad to hear man, what are you playing now?

      Reply

  17. Michael G. Thomas

    May 9, 2013 at 14:23

    I think that this is an extremely narrow minded point of view. World Of Warcraft subscription is generally still stable around 10 million, and even with other MMORPG’s on the market, no other company has yet been able to touch the numbers that Blizzard maintain in a 9 year old game. Ofcourse they are not at 12 million any longer, but name another MMO that’s even close?

    You’ve clearly never ever done more than level a character to possibly 20, and have no idea what you’re talking about – you read this in a blurb on somebody else’s game review webiste, and decided to pass it off as your own uneducated opinion.

    Reply

    • Admiral Chief Combat Engineer

      May 9, 2013 at 14:41

      Hold the phone, why are you attacking Zoe? She merely stated some info and not some “narrow minded point of view”

      Seems like the PoV is narrow on the other end

      Reply

    • Dean

      May 9, 2013 at 15:27

      I don’t know where you’re getting figures from, as the figures given above are from Blizzard themselves.

      Reply

    • Sageville

      May 9, 2013 at 19:50

      How ironic! You yourself are making assumptions based on your own personal “uneducated opinion”.

      Frankly, picking on the author for passing on Blizzards own stats is pretty lame.

      Reply

  18. Michael G. Thomas

    May 9, 2013 at 14:34

    Don’t delete my comments, I have freedom of speech, what is this, apartheid where non-whites can’t share their opinions?

    Reply

    • Gavin Mannion

      May 9, 2013 at 15:23

      We don’t delete comments unless you are being racist, using serious personal attacks or promoting illegal services.

      I’ll go see if our spam filter thought you were a bot

      Reply

    • Gavin Mannion

      May 9, 2013 at 15:28

      Checked the spam folder.. there is nothing but spam there and your comment hasn’t been deleted? Maybe it got lost in the Internet on the way through?

      Reply

    • Exalted Overlord Geoffrey Tim

      May 9, 2013 at 15:31

      Disqus, our comments system software, has been acting a little weird of late. We don’t delete comments unless they seriously cross an ethical line.

      Reply

      • Illuchne Mancera

        May 9, 2013 at 16:42

        I blame @google-78ff87ad4b67ab07d579d43163b265c2:disqus

        It’s because he hasn’t been trolling COD

        Reply

    • Sageville

      May 9, 2013 at 19:54

      Hmm, unless you specifically stated you were non-white, how exactly would people know of your ethnic origin, hopefully your post just got lost in the matrix.

      Nothing stopping you from posting it again.

      Reply

  19. Illuchne Mancera

    May 9, 2013 at 16:45

    I used to play WoW… from just after Lich was released until the beginning of this year… biggest issue is the R300 subs costs for 2 months of play when you’ve paid for the game and all expansions… it’s insane really.

    I probably won’t go back to it, my better half probably won’t either… guess that happens when you get priorities in life… LOL… right…

    Reply

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