Senior producer on MMORPG blockbuster says BioWare's new online game drawing some gamers away from Azeroth, calls drop "not surprising."
Activision reported last month that the World of Warcraft subscriber base fell to 10.2 million. What accounted for that dip? According to Blizzard, the drop was due in part to rival massively multiplayer online role-playing game Star Wars: The Old Republic.
WOW senior producer John Lagrave told Eurogamer at an event recently that the dip in WOW subscriptions is not a surprise. He also noted that some gamers are waiting until the Mists of Pandaria expansion arrives to return to Azeroth.
"We've seen a dip in subs," he said. "It certainly has to at least be attributable to The Old Republic, but it's also attributable to people who want to wait and get Mists of Pandaria, so it's not surprising."
Star Wars: The Old Republic shipped in December 2011 and quickly recorded sales of 2 million and tallied an active subscriber base of 1.7 million.
Next up for WOW is the Mists of Pandaria expansion. The add-on is set on the new continent of Pandaria and focuses on the Pandaren as well as the monk player class. The expansion pack, which does not have a release date, will also increase the player level cap to 90.
All I know is Blizz is going to have to step it up several notches if they want to go toe to toe with Guild Wars 2. GW2 will be doing mmorpg-ing right. Oh, and it wont have a monthly subscription. Check out GW2 if you haven't already. It's going to be mind blowing. It's completely different form the first one!
Played both and quit both. One lacks endgame content and the other is boring now. Hoping that Guild Wars 2 will change this D:
what i know that the coming up WOW Mists of Pandaria it's a big name and it's a big challenge to SWTOR but the differences and diversity in the worlds of SWTOR are much more 17 Different Planet - the Galaxy - the Big Space Ships and your own home ur space ship being U going into and out of the worlds .. & & & means u don't only play it ., u live it i'm with SWTOR ,...
I gave Old Republic a shot, but I like the idea of having an explorable world in which I can travel at will, not into the instanced thing.
@AceMarine45 Get over what? and grow up? what have i done to you to deserve these words you are typing?
HA! Blizzard making excuses for their self demise... lack of content isn't the problem, it's their attitude to the game (since BC) that's the problem. You had a lot of WoW fans Blizz, way to undermine your own success... It doesn't matter if you come out with an amazing new MMO while riding out the end of WoW, once people get burned they rarely go back... Yet another great franchise ruined by idiocy and greed.
Cataclysm is the reason I left WoW, not SWTOR. If MoP can introduce new gameplay and compelling endgame then I'll take notice, but I suspect it will be very similar to the prior content.
Blizz, I hope asians love pandas, 'cause you won't stop bleeding western players with the next exp
@Cozm1kaos stop trolling? All i did was quote you. If you are so pissed off maybe your should stop trolling yourself. Im not responsible for your stupidity
@NuKyy: Glad to say your wrong on Diablo. Been in the beta for some time now, latest build is REALLY good, and previous beta's while missing that X factor were better than other games of it's type.
I just finished my Jedi Knight questline couple of days ago, so I now have a Level 50 Guardian. My sub for SWtOR has also run out, and I have NO intention of re-subbing to it, there's just no reason to play it at this point, since there's only gear to grind at this point, and frankly I'd rather do that in the better game, which is still WoW as far as mmo's go.
It's partly TOR to be sure, but part of it is just that it's impossible for a game to stay fresh after, what, 7 years of continuous service? WoW got to where it is by knowing what they're doing and adjusting the game to the market, but the basic foundations are aging.
I don't think the Old Republic has much to do with WOW losing subs. The game is just really old and gets boring after a while. It would have lost those subs even if TOR wasn't released.
I hope, I really hope that when WH:40K: Dark Millenium comes out, wow and sw:tor players stays in those games cause I dont want to see them there... Diablo 3 is going to be the ruin of diablo series (God I hope im wrong)
Pandaren are in Warcraft... Pandaren > Gnomes. Exactly what part do the gnomes play in WOW from what I can remember none. Wow has been goign down hill since Burning Crusade...Horde Paladin and Alliance Shaman What a joke. D3 wont have PVP for some time and when it does it wont be GW2
people are actually waiting for that awful kung fu panda expansion pack? yea cuz Blizzard totally read my mind when I thought "What do I want next in WoW?" They totally delivered with fat-ass pandas....
It was bound to happen and I play both. Some people love the Star wars universe because it came first and I too love Star Wars. Now there is a real variety in the MMO department, people have choices. But the same thing can happen to SWTOR after awhile. Blizzard have to come up with something real good and not some penny-anny themes to recapture it's audience.
I quit WoW because it was in a bad state. Dragon Soul was a bad raid design, was simple also. I didn't jump ship to go to SW:TOR, I just wasn't interested in that game. My other guildies jumped to SW:TOR and then they quit before the end of the free month. Sure a lot of people quit WoW for SW:TOR, but then again, a lot of people dropped out because the lack of decent updates to WoW. Every time someone points something out, a broken spell, or a loot system, Blizzard's response is "You'll have to wait for Mop, we got a lot in store." I'm Sorry, but Blizzard did this before, the end of WOTLK, they changed the paladin model to have holy power. For level 80, holy power wasn't balanced enough, it wasn't even a working feature, untill you were close enough to 85 where you had other spells to use holy power and balance it out further. We had to wait months before Cata came out. This pathetic design of "Wait for the next expansion for this obvious broken tool to be fixed" was insulting and was why I dropped my ret paladin after years of playing him. This is the sole reason I am not getting Mop, Blizzard have tried to feed us these promised fixes to some of their features, but in order to get them, we got to shell out on their new expansion. I'd expect change to broken features to be fixed asap, not 8-10 months after they were being abused. I will be considering Guild Wars 2, Tera and Rift before even thinking about going back to WoW.
"I spoke to a guy returning in a dungeon run" Hahaha!! This comments thread is killing me!!
I just like the thought of a load of WoW activists fighting a load of Star Wars fanatics... Hahaha. Major lolfest. :lol:
is all about da Money .. no solid creative MMo anymore , even SWTOR it took my breath away at start , then i started to feel bored with same other games grinding with a little twist . imo GW2 gonna deliver wht rly players wanted from along time ago .
I am still on the fence over TOR, so I went back to WoW for a bit. May go back in June, but right now I wasn't really impressed with it. Maybe after it has had some time, the other classes other then the Bounty Hunter may interest me more.
I played WoW for about 7 years and it was fun, A LOT of fun. People wanted more story based content so Cataclysm delivered... and help turn WoW into a Massive Single Player RPG. SWTOR is a lot like that too, but it also has a lot more bugs and is missing features that Blizzard had covered in the original WoW and the 3 expansions. I'm a Star Wars fan so despite all the bugs (and there are still many) I do enjoy the game. So unless Blizzard makes MoP better than TBC (I doubt it), I'm going to keep fly my space ship in a galaxy far, far away.
It could also be that people are wanting something different from their MMO, WOW has pandas, and they felt that Star Wars was offering more. There aren't many who may have many active subscriptions to an MMO, I currently have 3, but in a few months that will become 1, with 1 free to play remaining. I recently bought Cataclysm didn't really like all of the changes made (I know why they did it) and looking at Mists and Pandaria well I can say I will not want to get WOW Kung Fu Panda personally.
I think what this guy means is that the pandas scared most of us to a galaxy far, far away.
The new player base from wow is completely different from that one from the old days, the game is full of casuals asking for content everytime they finish their raids and dungeons on easy modes, the community is a complete joke and the game is not the same unfortunately, however going from wow to swtor is not a good idea if you are looking for challenge swtor is not a bad game but the game still lacks some key features to make it great, 10 million subs on wow? some people will be surprised to see how many of those 10 million subs are chinese players, Asia is the main bastion of wow, wow has it's own economy and gold there is the law, many people don't even pay their subs with electronic money, they pay 10k gold for prepaid cards, you can even buy SC2, transfers, etc, in less words you don't have to pay for playing wow now, some people won't leave wow that easy unless you have some strong discipline, specially with this kind of situations (emotional bonds with their characters, friends, they pay everything with gold, accesibility etc.), i left wow 1 year ago and it feels really really good to not go back to that cesspool, there is too many games on the market that are 100 times better.
Played this for the free weekend. It was a lot of fun but plays more like a big single player game than an mmo. But being a former wow junkie I dont see a wow player jumping over to this. Not for long anyway. Lots of people left for war hammer, final fantasy and aeon but most came right back. Wow fans are big into the fantasy genre. But for sci -fi fans and of course Star wars fans this is a dream come true.
Already seeing many returning to wow from swtor in fact today I spoke to a guy returning in a dungeon run and he loved his stay in swtor,but he said it was awesome while leveling,but the pvp is broken and was not fun to play(WoW pvp is broken right now as well I might note).The Raids are bugged really bad and he did not like the instance feel the game had.Pandaria did not sound well when 1st announced,but the lates information made it sound very fun time will tell wow is very old,but my server Malfurion is bustling with activity:P
I played wow for 3 years. Its just got to the point where i was raiding 3 or 4 times a week plus maintaining 2 or 3 characters. It became a job outside my real job and as a result I just stopped enjoying it. Now I have loads of fun playing loads of stuff on xbox!
WoW is a great MMO and still the best in the genre imo but I played for 3 years straight and just got a bit tired of the game so I moved to SWTOR, which is also an amazing game. I'm not looking for either to fail because its nice to see other MMO's keeping it alive other than WoW. Guild Wars 2 should be another good one for the genre.
So if WoW is stale you'd much rather they shut down the servers for good? Its a very old game with a lot of dated updates so give it a break. I don't play this but for those saying its stale, what is the alternative?
Personally I'm waiting for Secret World. There's no such thing as an MMO that you won't get bored with eventually. You can only revisit the same places so many times before it's no longer fun. New content cannot possibly come out fast enough to offset this.
The only thing killing WoW is the game itself. Its getting old, stale and its tired. I'd be focusing massively on their Titan MMO if I were Blizzard, WoW has had its time in the sun. SWTOR? Please don't get me started on that dismal linear heavily instanced garbage.
Cataclysm doesn't improve World of Warcraft as dramatically as the free update that preceded it did, but it's still a great expansion pack for anyone with high-level characters.
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