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World of Warcraft has lost 50% of its player userbase since 2017

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Ashodin

Ashodin

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Article:

www.nme.com

Blizzard has lost nearly half its monthly active users in four years

Blizzard's monthly active users have fallen from 46million players to 26million since 2017.
www.nme.com www.nme.com

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Reminder, these are active characters being played being captured in data - and doesn't even account for most of those characters being alts (the game is very alt-friendly)

Bellular covering some numbers based on raiding and data websites:



Yeah, if you didn't know, there's a MASS exodus going on with high level streamers moving to various other MMOs (FFXIV and Guild Wars 2 in particular have gotten a HUGE boost in players, and New World (lol) has been looked at a lot more.)

So yeah. It's a real big problem for them. They didn't even mention Shadowlands in particular in the last call.

Turns out the WoW Killer.. was wow itself
 
Dolce

Dolce

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Oct 25, 2017
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It seems like a lot of those players aren't actually moving on to other games. For as much as FFXIV has had new players, it's probably only had a few hundred thousand new people join. It's crazy to think how the MMO genre is just evaporating.
 
Musubi

Musubi

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I don't think I've seen even hardcore WoW fans have anything positive to say about the game for years now.
 
Milennia

Milennia

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This is over the course of 4 years, so it started during the tail end of legion during the massive content hiatus
I'm sure it's only gotten worse as many of my friends and myself have moved on, prior to the Blizzard internal issues even, due to the way the game is being ran

It's simply not worth playing the game at a high level like we were when the team behind it doesn't make on the fly changes and makes outright bad decisions month after month, introducing horrid systems that have their own balancing nightmarish concerns

Nearly all of my friends that quit moved over to FF, the rest of us no longer play MMOs period, I'll be burned out on the genre for the next year probably, then look for an alternative if things have not turned around, and I have absolutely zero reason to believe anything will change

EDIT: also if you wanted to see an even larger loss, you can look at the game from ICC on, but that was a different time for the genre where WoW was the absolute pillar and had a drastic falloff of subs with cataclysm and it's content droughts
 
Aztechnology

Aztechnology

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how many copies did shadowland sell? It broke records didn't it? So it's probably obviously still quite profitable for them even just selling expansions.
 
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Ashodin

Ashodin

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elenarie

elenarie

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Aztechnology said:
how many copies did shadowland sell?
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Several million.

The player base drop is as expected. The COVID and WFH situation caused significant delays in the 9.1 content update, so lots of people didn't really have much new content to play for a few months after they were done with the raids. Nothing surprising here.

9.1 was an amazing raid and intriguing lore implications, but usually content updates don't bring back the same amount of people expansions do, as expected.

Musubi said:
I don't think I've seen even hardcore WoW fans have anything positive to say about the game for years now.
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Hardcore WoW fan here, the game is as amazing as it has ever been, still playing it on a daily basis. :)
 

Deleted member 4090

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Oct 25, 2017
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This is pretty much the pattern of every expansion? Giant surge the first few months then a massive falloff?

elenarie said:
Several million.

The player base drop is as expected. The COVID and WFH situation caused significant delays in the 9.1 content update, so lots of people didn't really have much new content to play for a few months after they were done with the raids. Nothing surprising here.

9.1 was an amazing raid and intriguing lore implications, but usually content updates don't bring back the same amount of people expansions do, as expected.
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Yeah Shadowlands launch was huge. This just makes it seem like it wasn't enough to counter the cyclical cycle.

WoW had a much better 2nd half of an expansion than usual with BfA. It's just faded to... remain the most popular MMO except by a less significant margin?

The huge drop shown in the article's graph is pretty old, and is when there was peak Overwatch and Hearthstone. WoW was actually more stable and close to the usual cycle than their other IPs.
 
SimplyComplex

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Tbh I'm shocked it's still doing that well. I have ones friend that's addicted to WoW otherwise I'd be out of the loop on what's happening with the game.
 
Slayven

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I thought this would be one of the "data taken out of context" like half the base since it launched. But that drop in 3 years is not so hot
 
Masagiwa

Masagiwa

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Jan 27, 2018
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It's probably the lowest it's ever been at this point which is quite funny when they were headlining "fastest selling PC game" at launch. 9.1.5 and any patch/expansion moving forward either is a constant barrage of good changes or they can't win back the players again. Everybody thought Shadowlands was gonna be the good one again after BFA.
 
Sabin

Sabin

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Oct 25, 2017
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Not a big surprise.

After years of ignoring feedback during betas where content creators and player told them that certain system don't work and forcing more awful systems onto players no one asked everyone was just fed up with the shit blizzard pulled AGAIN with shadowlands and just left.
 
VaanXSnake

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As it should, wow is a fucking mess right now, devs need to get their shit together to bring to players what they deserved.
 
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Ashodin

Ashodin

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Wrexis said:
People get older and have kids and can't commit to a new MMO.
It's why the older Everquest style genre of MMOs died off.
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Not exactly though, because the zoomer population is also discovering MMOs, there's a kind of cycle going on where you're seeing older people not have as much time and zoomers wanting something to do with their time
 
Aztechnology

Aztechnology

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elenarie said:
Several million.

The player base drop is as expected. The COVID and WFH situation caused significant delays in the 9.1 content update, so lots of people didn't really have much new content to play for a few months after they were done with the raids. Nothing surprising here.

9.1 was an amazing raid and intriguing lore implications, but usually content updates don't bring back the same amount of people expansions do, as expected.
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Ah right it wasn't that it broke like total sales records but it was the fastest selling PC game of all time I remember.
 
icecream

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Serious Sam said:
It's OK to let people play the game that they want to play. What does it matter to you?
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Exactly, why are articles like this needed? Let people play what they want to play, instead of rubbing in their faces that their MMO is sharply declining, suggesting that they should rethink why they are playing it. Or telling them that everyone else is moving to X/Y/Z MMO to suggest that they should too.
 
Genesius

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Nov 2, 2018
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They stuck to the subscription model and can't put out games fast enough to take advantage of popular trends. If they had put out a Destiny-style game on consoles in the Warcraft universe, I'd have been all over it. That ship sailed a long time ago now.
 
Ambient

Ambient

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Dec 23, 2017
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I uninstalled the game despite having a month or two left on my sub. I guess I still count as a "subscriber" but I'm not playing the game again. I wonder how many other people are in a similar situation.
 
Milennia

Milennia

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Mercador said:
TL;DW : why ? I know that FFXIV is popular but WoW is still a great game ? (I think) Though I haven't played since 2014...
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It hasn't been an actual good game in 3 expansions, Legion was good from the mid point on, early legion had a massive wave of people quitting because of legendary drop rng, which is one of the worst systems implemented in the history of the game until they put everything on vendors

WoD wasn't bad, the class design was very good, the content was meh
MoP is the last very good WoW expansion, when the game was good top to bottom for me, literally most of the team that worked on this expansion is gone from the company for years
 

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Gravijah said:
It seems like a lot of those players aren't actually moving on to other games. For as much as FFXIV has had new players, it's probably only had a few hundred thousand new people join. It's crazy to think how the MMO genre is just evaporating.
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I wonder if the growth of the games-as-service market has bitten into the MMO market, as people have more options for games that reward long term investment. Or maybe people are just getting bored.
 
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Ashodin

Ashodin

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icecream said:
Exactly, why are articles like this needed? Let people play what they want to play, instead of rubbing in their faces that their MMO is sharply declining, suggesting that they should rethink why they are playing it. Or telling them that everyone else is moving to X/Y/Z MMO to suggest that they should too.
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I get that it can be difficult to read but it is definitely news? Like, people would want to know if a service game is having difficulties, and with the recent lawsuit, knowing the outcomes and relations to that issue
 
Aztechnology

Aztechnology

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icecream said:
Exactly, why are articles like this needed? Let people play what they want to play, instead of rubbing in their faces that their MMO is sharply declining, suggesting that they should rethink why they are playing it. Or telling them that everyone else is moving to X/Y/Z MMO to suggest that they should too.
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We'll it's still interesting. Even as someone who has played it even recently.
 
Dolce

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Milennia said:
It hasn't been an actual good game in 3 expansions, Legion was good from the mid point on, early legion had a massive wave of people quitting because of legendary drop rng, which is one of the worst systems implemented in the history of the game until they put everything on vendors
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I loved random Legendaries :( But I'm a casual. Legion was probably my favorite expansion to play because they simplified most classes, and it had a ton of content aimed pretty much directly at me.
 
TheWorthyEdge

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WoW will be dead in the next 2-3 years. FFXIV will continue to eat it's lunch and Riot's MMO will put the final nail in the coffin.
 
Milennia

Milennia

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Gravijah said:
I loved random Legendaries :( But I'm a casual. Legion was probably my favorite expansion to play because they simplified most classes, and it had a ton of content aimed pretty much directly at me.
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Yeah for raiders and pvpers I mean it was just hell on literal earth lmao
We sat in maw of souls for weeks straight, I had to sit out of the world first race for a tier and a half because I couldn't get some dumb bracers, truly the worst time I've had in that game

It's not bad for casual players because there's no urgency, and I can see how that's fun for that crowd, which is most of the community
Any raider got absolutely ripped apart if you didn't have the right drop though, I had a good one in EN and after that due to balancing (BALANCING LEGENDARIES THAT HAVE AN EXTREMELY LOW DROP CHANCE), it became ass
 
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