Where do you find sub numbers reported? And do those count ftp-ers?

I paid for the year-pass out of a sense of momentum more than anything ese. My time as a semi-serious world of warcraft player is pretty much done. I know that. That said, my kids still play and I know I’m going to play Diablo 3 when it comes out. So it’s still a win for me.

SWTOR? I’d love to play it. I played the beta and watched a HUGE number of friends give up WoW for it. Maybe when they come out with a Mac client I will

People were clamoring for TOR before it launched and look where we are now. People were ecstatic for the original GW and it didn’t make a big dent in the MMO world.

There’s so much hype about the next big thing that it’s never actually come. Many people have taken a swing, some have had decent hits but absolutely no one will ever be able to hit a homerun. The MMO-virgin is extinct and that’s how WoW made its millions.

WoW could release nothing but screenshots for 3 years and still end up with more subscribers than all other western MMOs combined.

In the meantime though, I am gonna bet that sub numbers are going to bleed rather heavily while players wait for MoP. Especially if the choice of prime MMO’s increases with the release of TERA and GW2 during this downtime. Boredom and new games is never a good mix for player retention.

Since then, there are people regretting the annual pass, there will be no new content, the novelty of transmogrification will wear off, people will be sick of LFR, Dragon Soul will be nerfed to the ground, more guilds will have collapsed, six-month subscriptions will have ceded in the time since BlizzCon, SW:TOR will actually tell on subscriptions and Guild Wars 2 will be closer. I absolutely do not believe the worst has passed, and that the next quarter will see the worst losses yet.

Expect a loss of over a million, maybe even two. That’s how far I think WoW has fallen.

I introduced a RL friend to WoW two weeks ago, and while I played with her in the start zone, it just drove home that it’s not really a game to play together as a duo anymore, not the way SWTOR is, e.g. I’ll rather wait for Guild Wars 2, my anticipation levels for MoP are very low.

I’m very curious about TOR’s long term numbers, given that I know of a few people who unsubbed WoW over a year ago went to playing that instead. It’s entirely possible that WoW might not be affected in their numbers because there’s enough turnover in the MMO market that new players are replacing the old.

As for the annual pass, 10% seems awfully low to me. I expected that there’d be more along the lines of 20-30%, particularly since you’d figure that there’s a core group of long time players still there. I guess that means that the churn in subscription numbers goes deeper than I thought.

I recently resubbed to WoW, having quit just before Cataclysm released, but I didn’t take the annual pass. Mainly because I will likely unsub in the event i get Diablo 3 to play it, and it only gives you access to the MoP beta which I don’t really care that much about. Since MoP will release this year, you’re already on the hook for another $40 if you actually want to use the rest of your pass. Now if they threw in the actual expansion for free, I might do it.

I don’t really get the hybrid complaints though. Does anyone pick mage expecting to heal or tank? It might make sense to get rid of ‘specs’ for dps and have all of them play the same way, but then maybe people like the variety or find one spec smoother to play than the next. This is one of those things that just ain’t broke, so they shouldn’t try to fix it.