Blizzard wants you to stop talking about WoW's sub numbers: But why now?
Blizzard Entertainment has finally drawn the line. They want people to stop asking about their subscriber numbers for World of Warcraft. Gamespot reports that “…this week’s announcement of 5.5 million subscribers is the last time the company plans to divulge those numbers.” World of Warcraft has been holding onto a lot of subscribers since the beginning of its launch. It has good years and bad years on numbers.
Why now after being out for a little more than 11 years has Blizzard decided to stop reporting on its numbers?
I think Blizzard is becoming a little insecure about World of Warcraft. For the longest time, WoW has been the MMORPG to beat. Now they are left with less than half of their peak subscribers.
There have been many games to come out that were predicted to end WoWs reign and then flopped. Now with games like Fallout 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 about to be released their subscriber rate could drop. Even with their new expansion pack Legion coming out there is only so many expansions and content a game can release before it’s just old news.
There is also a chance that Blizzard wants to encourage players to come play. Reporting their dropping numbers could lead to players quitting or just not bothering to try out the game at all. Then again they could just be tired of people asking them what their numbers are.
What do you think?
Source us.blizzard.com
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I definitely think it has a lot to do with people quitting. They aren't a 10 million subscriber juggernaut anymore and the numbers being public are just going to hurt them rather than bolstering them. Of course, 5 million subscribers still completely dwarfs any other MMO out there. What Blizz needs to do is make the game feel populated again. My garrison is the loneliest place on earth. I quit playing about 3 months ago when my guild fell apart. I didn't keep playing because of the loneliness, and I'm on Area-52, something like 5th most popular server.
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I think it is out of embarrassment. Also, because they are afraid of scaring away investors. I'm disappointed, because I like seeing how various changes they make influence subscriber numbers. For instance, making the entire game about garrisons and getting rid of flight halved the number of subscribers (I'm partly joking but I think those were big factors in the substantial drop in numbers earlier this year).
