World of Warcraft → Re: World of Warcraft down to 7.7 million

I did think about how often Blizzard HAD to update it's tiers, and every 3 or 6 months may not be necessary to many players provided getting the gear is very difficult. It's about managing supply and demand.

As to active subscribers, I believe Blizzard is counting worldwide subscribers. Not everyone in the world pays the same. I think in China WoW costs about $5 for 66 hours - »www.warcraftchina.com/sa ··· tro.html (access via google translate is helpful if you don't read the language). The reason I believe Blizzard may be including all players in the world is from reading articles like this - »www.geek.com/games/world ··· 1439355/

I understand in China players use local servers run by a company that has an affiliation with Blizzard. However, those players are likely part of the base.

If gold farming is not profitable, or limited, it could explain why many Chinese players could have left the game.

I would like to know how active players are in the U.S. and Europe vs. worldwide. Are subscriptions down as much in the U.S. or Europe compared to Asia (China in particular)?

They have to be careful though as people "finish" content at different speeds.

I've been decked out in all the LFR gear I need for 6 weeks so for me, I'm done with ToT. Likewise the majority of guilds that have downed Lei Shen on normal will view ToT as done, they may do the odd heroic kill but they don't have the skilled players required to do it all.

On the flipside you have guilds who have reached a stumbling point with Horridon/Durumu and are still not done with the tier.

Without updates those players "done" with the current tier will get bored and unsubscribe and Blizz lose money.On the 5th August ToT will be only 5 months old, yet WoW has bled subs. Time in the expansion cycle and the fact it's summer will have something to do with it of course, but without regular content people will just leave.

That's an interesting point. Chinese prisons are known for forcing inmates to farm gold to be sold later. Perhaps the magnitude in which this is done has been minimized; Perhaps they found a new way to create income outside of WoW and cancelled their subscriptions.

You may have a point, maybe a new tier every 6 months. Doesn't matter much, older content has already been recycled into newer dungeons. Dust off a BC raid and make it 90, with whatever tier is necessary. It'll be nice for the older players, and if the gear is good, people will run it. Cost should be minimal.

I think once a Chinese company had license for WoW, the peoples party may have blocked other Blizzard servers. Forcing Chinese prisoners into a Chinese WoW system, may not be at all profitable. I don't recall exactly when China had it's own WoW, but recall reading about it a while back. If attrition is partly due to loss of gold farming, it may be an improvement rather than a loss for many playing the game.

My idea is to release 2-3 bosses every single month. Either they are part of a large story or make them each have their own sort of theme. Similar to CoD how people play all the time because new maps/weapons keep comin out all the time.

Every time we have one of these threads, you should just quote me as to why this game is losing players from another thread. Even Immer agreed.

Well, I bailed on this game again and have been taking an extended hiatus. There are things to do in this game, but I have been uninterested in doing them. Grinding the same content over and over again is just not fun to me. I really am enjoying my time playing Fallout New Vegas and other games I haven't had the opportunity to play much. I may return again down the road. Just having too much fun right now.

Wait, it's losing subscribers? Is the game becoming F2P? Is WoW dying? (dieing).

EDIT: »finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ATVI&ql=1

Blizzard closed with a 15% increase.

I downloaded data since 10/1993 from the site Snuffbox linked. The highest the stock has ever been was in 6/2001 where for one day it opened and closed at just over $40. There was one other day in June it opened at just over $40 but closed at $37. The highest 30 historical opening prices were in 2001.

The information provided is from 10/25/93 to 7/26/13, and based on opening prices this is what I found:

Average prices:

total: $15.21

93: 11.06
94: 6.97 (eek!)
95: 10.16
96: 12.76
97: 13.67
98: 11.99
99: 13.67
00: 11.63 (should have bought a bunch at a low time during this year)
01: 28.95 (then sold at a high time during this year)
02: 26.09
03: 14.24
04: 16.06
05: 18.31
06: 13.87
07: 19.95
08: 24.61 (I feel sorry for folks who bought at a high point this year)
09: 11.17
10: 11.24
11: 11.71
12: 11.81
13: 14.02

As for 2013, the stock price appears to be increasing with the general market, from $10.65 on 1/1 generally increasing little by little through 7/25 to $15.38. Then on 7/26 we had a blow up to $17.16, that day showing a huge opening price in comparison to the closing price of the prior day, which I (being a nobody) would attribute to the Vivendi thing.

I found it interesting to note that Blizzard stock is currently more than $1 lower than the average for all prices since 10/93. It also looks like the prices generally increase until 2000, in which year they drop and are followed by a sharp increase in 2001. Then another massive dip in 2006 with two fairly good years of growth. Then another massive dip in 2009 followed by very little growth until this year. But the growth in 2013 isn't a massive jump. But if this list is of any merit, perhaps we'll be seeing continued growth this year and again next year? But even so, it's been generally downhill since 2001.

My numbers may not be perfect, but they should be close. And I've uploaded the data I'm basing them on. And anyway: blah blah blah. I found it interesting enough to spend 45 minutes compiling data - kinda' fun to see the numbers, but that's all. I should reiterate that though I believe WoW is a HUGE portion of Blizzard, these numbers represent Blizzard as a whole and not WoW in particular.