Destiny 2 doesnt have money hungry publisher, is run by much smaller team and content for that game is definitly cheaper to make. So point at other games is kinda nonsense becouse there is big difference in cost when comes to actualy creating game content and running company.
As other games can by just fine with smaller payerbase wow wouldnt be sustainable unleas you cut down develpment cost drasticly.
My character is. I’m not.
I don’t tend to read about numbers, because I don’t care.
Thanks for giving me context.
Let’s be honest: You just linked me a picture. That was all.
So thanks. Now I know what I was actually looking at.
You’re showing me graphs without proper context and blame ME?
Right.
That’s right. I don’t. Because I have no interest in them whatsoever.
All that matters to me is if the game is fun for me. Weird, I know. 
Tbh, blizzard just lost atleast a million players losing china.
Itd be a actual miracle if blizzard overtook prior launchs after that 
id be interested to see sales in western only comparison to get a better idea of how the western audience is comparitively to DF.
The grounds arent even in comparison.
It had, remember they were formerly with Activision Blizzard as publisher…
It only is getting better now the since the split. Each expansion is doing better than the one before.
Not really. Both WoW and Destiny 2 were milestones in their respective genres. WoW was the most successful MMORPG of all time so far while Destiny 1/2 both were games that did define the Live-Service-Loot-Shooter-Genre by themselves. Games like “The Division 1/2” and “Anthem” were all games inspired by Destiny 1 success in the year 2014, similar like other MMORPGs were inspired by World of Warcraft coming out in 2004.
You overestimate how big WoW is. It is not that big as you might think.
I remember we had threads many months ago talking about Dragonflight’s release date, and that Blizzard would surely try to get it out before Christmas, because Hogwarts Legacy was stated to be released then, and that looked like a serious competitor based on the early gameplay footage.
And Blizzard aren’t “when it’s ready” anymore, they’re very much choosing their release dates based on competition.
So Dragonflight was released close to the holidays as expected, but Hogwarts Legacy was curiously delayed.
Until now.
And that game is just exploding in success.
The next quarterly results for WoW will reflect that.
It’s a roleplaying fantasy game with magic and monsters. The overlap is insane, the franchise is a powerhouse, and the audience is gigantic. Plus the game is evidently great.
That game is going to suck players from WoW like a mosquito sucks blood from an unfortunate person going to bed not knowing they’ll wake up with a red spot on their calf in the morning that itches so much and is super annoying for the whole day and they can’t stop scratching it and nothing seems to help and they can’t sleep the night after because they still aren’t sure if the mosquito is around and whenever they close their eyes they think they can hear a low pitched noise going nnnnnnnnnn.
It’s going to be a train-wreck.
As initial hype? Sure. But it is still a single player game, people will eventually finish it like dragon age or to a certain extent Skyrim(cant really finish Skyrim but you get my point).
So will there be a sub drop in February-March? Likely.
Will it remain permanently as the “WoW killer”? I doubt it…
Ah, after 19 years finally a real WoW killer. Took them long enough.
Yeah, I’m sceptical.
I think both statements are true.
Shadowlands did push loads of people away, and yes WoD flopped whilst Legion did really well. The two statements aren’t mutually exclusive though I do believe there’s more to it than that.
WoD followed a successful expansion, and on paper, it was a great idea. It oozed of everything that wow is known for, essentially pulling a “what if?” in one of warcraft’s most pivotal moments (a moment which a lot of players also were quite familiar with because of the old RTS games and more). People weren’t mad at the concept, people were mad at the execution of it.
It then got follow by legion, which had a VERY strong identity. Everyone remembers the Legion, Illidan & Demon Hunters. Class fantasy was really strong (alt unfriendlyness and awful grind aside…) The story made sense from the get go, and the patch cycle was fast.
Now SL came from a pretty problematic expansion, which pissed a lot of people off, both in concept and execution. A lot of the fears from beta came to pass, the concepts were ill received. Let’s not even get to the myriads of lore problems and how it basically, ruined all of wow’s past lore. Not to mention that the expansion kept fighting us, which is a huge difference between SL and WoD. WoD had a content drought, it didn’t really get in the way of the players the way SL did.
So here comes DF… Unlike Legion which came back with a really familiar core concept, DF just brought slinky dragon humanoids. Don’t get me wrong, I love dragon and titan lore and what’s going on in the game right is cool, I’m not convinced that the average player knows the dragons as well they know The Legion or Arthas though.
It’s not that DF is bad or weak, quite on the contrary I would say, it’s more that it didn’t have any really strong pull in order to convince all the players who felt massively let down by SL, to give blizzard a 3rd chance.
Right around now is when a WoW expansion starts to see its initial subscribers drop off as they’ve chopped through the box product content.
Patch 10.1 will come out in June at the earliest.
WoW does not need a competing blockbuster game to come out now.
That’s going to tear into the subscribers until then, at least.
I haven’t said that.
I have simply said that Blizzard are going to feel the impact of this.
Back in the old days when WoW had 12 million subscribers it could lose a million or two to new competing MMORPGs and blockbuster titles that came out. Whatever. WoW still had 10 million subscribers, it’s fine. 8 million? More than enough. 6 million? That’s plenty!
Now I doubt Blizzard can count to more than 2 or 3 million at most. WoW absolutely cannot lose tens of thousands or millions without the impact being felt back in California.
Blizzard’s strategy for WoW is customer retention. Hogwarts Legacy will put Blizzard’s ability to retain people to the test.
Right. I said this earlier in the thread as well. People cannot blame Shadowlands for Dragonflight having a weak theme.
Rainbows and friendly neighborhood dragons isn’t an exciting concept that gets people hyped to buy and play the expansion – evidently.
And that’s all on Blizzard.
Blizzard could have picked any other expansion concept theme they wanted. Blizzard chose this. And all there is to say to that is:
although tbh, new games tend to flourish more due to the hype just generally being ALOT higher for something brand new compared to a carry on.
yeah we are still missing that “its ready when its ready” although i beleive the reason wasnt due to holidays nor because of other game launchs.
i think, the problem was, if they held SL Open much longer, DF Wouldnt have a playerbase to launch for, when your game is in such disrepair. the reaction needs to be immediate, because even if buggy no one will return for a patch, no one will return for content. people will only ever return for a expansion launch.
blizzard knows, it couldnt drop a final SL Patch with content to keep players subbed. i geninuely beleive, if DF Was delayed til feburary. the game would of been sub 500k.
the bleed was far too rapid. my entire guild of over 400 players, died in litterally 1 week during Season 4. my Discord of over 800 Shut down due to everyone leaving. SL Was crashing sooo hard it would have driven blizzard into panic.
Blizzard need another expansion ending like Legion, because without it, “Its finished when its finished” just doesnt work.
Geninuely, even in a buggy mess, i’d take DF over SL, i dont care if the games only accessible 1 hour per day due to down time. litterally compared to SL, i’d of favored it. im sorry, but that expansion should have quite litterally never left.
BFA Going on for 4 years, with additional patchs would have been a better alternative to a day longer in that sh*tshow.
What are these numbers based on?
Brain memory math.
When Blizzard had 12 million and WoW closed down momentarily in China as they switched operators from The9 to NetEase they reportedly lost 50% of their subscribers (for those few days), i.e. China accounted for 5-6 million. That left 5-6 million between the US and EU. And it’s always been generally perceived that those markets have been roughly of the same size, so 2.5-3 million each.
WoW has lost subscribers for long and there is no WoW in China today. So take previous figures for the US and EU and scale them down a bit, and you end up with 2-3 million at most.
In Jito’s brain that is. 
In other words, based on the numbers from over a decade ago and calculating forward?
Look, you may be right. But the problem with using numbers in such arguments is … they can no longer be backed up since Blizzard refuses to release the exact numbers per game.
We only know they gained 14M MAUs from 30th of sept to dec 31st. But that includes Diablo, OW etc…
Therefore I’m not a fan of these arguments. You may be right, you may be wrong. We don’t know. According to some external sources it was supposed to be 8M in Dec with close to 5M subs. Since then China dropped, but yeah, it’s a bit intentionally vague it seems since WoD(?).
This is very true and i am sad to admit alongside china going it is going to hit wow hard .
Financially, barely a scratch. And that’s all that matters anyways.
But it’s an easy estimation. And it’s very difficult to miss the mark too much.
I mean, when Blizzard reported 12 million subscribers in early Cataclysm they had full market saturation. Blizzard haven’t introduced WoW to new countries or languages since. So 12 million is the absolute most WoW subscribers there has been (actually just shy of 13 million I believe Paul Sams COO reported just after Cataclysm was released, unofficially).
And we know that China peaked with half of those 12 million subscribers, because that got revealed during that move from The9 to Netease.
So we know that the west – US and EU – can never have accounted for more than 6 million subscribers combined.
And there’s no WoW in China today.
So 6 million is the absolute most WoW subscribers you can possibly imagine. But that would assume that Blizzard haven’t lost a single subscriber in the US and EU since Cataclysm. And that’s obviously not the case.
And if you scroll through the servers list, then it’s not very unreasonable to say that WoW has lost half its subscribers in the US and EU. That’s not a devastating loss for a 13 year period.
But that still leaves WoW with no more than 3 million subscribers.
It’s hard to argue a lot more than that, because then you have to argue that almost no one quits WoW in the US and EU.
And the joker to add weight to the estimation is that every recent expansion (except Dragonflight) has sold ~3 million copies on release. And the US and EU always get expansion release ahead of China. So those 3 million copies sold fits nicely with an estimated subscriber count in the US and EU of 3 million!
And since Blizzard for the first time didn’t report a Dragonflight expansion sale of 3 million copies, then it’s fair to assume that the subscribers are perhaps a bit below 3 million.
So 2-3 million. You can argue less, but it’s hard to argue more.
I mean i am very hopefully for the future and i enjoy DF still needs work but better than SL in some points for me by a country mile.
This isn’t from official sources? Since all they said was that it didn’t reach the level of the previous expansion, which I think was 3.7?
All the WoW expansions have shattered first-day sales records, except Dragonflight. They’ve all sold 3 million copies and some hundred thousands. So that obviously gives us a stable subscriber number in the US and EU of 3 million.
That’s retail sales in the EU and US. It’s very 1:1 here, and it’s fair to assume every stable WoW player in the US and EU buys the expansion ahead of its release, ergo why it’s so easy to guess the subscriber numbers now. We don’t have to guess about China.
And if Blizzard haven’t reported sales numbers for Dragonflight, then it’s obviously because there are now a little less in the US and EU playing WoW. So 2-3 million, but not more.
How many do you think were lost with China going?