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WoW’s Subscriber Losses: Why Both the Haters and the Apologists Are Right

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Well, here we are again. Blizzard has done their quarterly conference call and announced a massive drop in World of Warcraft’s subscription numbers. This time, it lost 800,000 subscribers, taking it down to 6.8 million subs globally.

Official logo for World of WarcraftWhenever this happens, everyone seems to divide themselves into one of two camps. One side does their best Chicken Little impressions, screaming “WoW is dying” from the rooftops. Others are quick to point out that this is still vastly more players than any other subscription MMO can boast, and they do their very best to make it seem as if everything is fine and dandy in Blizzard land.

They’re both right, and they’re both wrong.

The middle ground:

It is true that WoW is still one of the most successful MMOs on the market. It rakes in money hand over fist, and it has more subscribers than most MMO developers can dream of, even after recent losses.

WoW is only dying in the sense we all are. It’s in a state of slow decline that will eventually result in its demise. But that’s not going to happen anytime soon. The game is still very healthy, and we’re probably at least a decade away from it being at any serious risk of closure.

So in that sense, those who try to make these subscriber losses seem like no big deal are right. WoW is still an extremely successful game by absolutely any standard.

But that doesn’t mean losing so many subscriptions isn’t a big deal. They lost nearly a million players in three months. That’s a huge blow no matter how you choose to spin it.

A vision of Azeroth burning during the questline to acquire Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's RestMore importantly, this is part of a trend that has been going on for years and shows no signs of letting up. WoW now has barely more than half the population it had at its peak. The last time it had this few subscribers, Burning Crusade hadn’t even been released yet.

It cannot be denied that these are major losses, and Blizzard would be incredibly foolish not to be concerned by them. So in that sense, the Chicken Littles do have a point. WoW may not be at any imminent risk of collapse, but it is taking a pretty brutal beating.

I hear a lot of people saying that WoW is still making “enough” money. And that’s quite true. It’s also completely irrelevant.

WoW continues to enjoy massive profits — they’re making more money than ever thanks to the ever-expanding cash shop and their account services. But imagine how much more they would be making with today’s cash shop and account services as well as the twelve million subscribers they had in Wrath of the Lich King.

There’s no such thing as “enough” money to a publicly traded corporation. That’s not how capitalism works. They always want to be making as much money as they possibly can. Even if they’re making up the profits in other ways, losing subscribers is still costing them money. That’s bad.

My rogue showing off her Fang of Oblivion transmog in World of WarcraftAs usual, the Internet fails to realize there’s a middle ground between the most extreme arguments. WoW is still popular, but it’s far less popular than it was.

So that brings us to the important question here: What is Blizzard going to do about these losses?

The consequences:

The discussion over subscriber losses would be largely academic, but inevitably, Blizzard must take action to combat these losses. And that’s why we should be concerned. Not because WoW is at any risk of imminent death, but because as the losses grow more severe, so too must their efforts to stem the tide of lost money.

We’ve already seen their solutions to the lost subscribers to date: They’ve simply tried to milk more money from the remaining players. It may be my imagination, but it seems the rate at which they’ve put out more mounts and pets for the cash shop has been increasing as of late. It’s sure not slowing down.

I don’t think anyone is particularly happy with this direction. At best, people tolerate it. I’m someone who prefers free to play and buy to play games, so I’m no stranger to cash shops, but I view micro-transactions as the lesser of two evils when compared with a mandatory subscription. I don’t actually enjoy them. I certainly don’t want a worst of both worlds game that requires a sub to play and pushes me towards the cash shop at every opportunity, which does seem to be where WoW is gradually heading.

A herd of macaroni dragonsThe need for continued revenue also impacts game design in a negative way. We’re all familiar with the ungodly daily grind during the first half of Mists of Pandaria, and I find it impossible to believe this was anything but a cash grab. Did anyone really think that spending a month grinding Golden Lotus reputation so you could spend a month grinding August Celestials reputation was good gameplay?

No, it was just an attempt to keep people subscribed longer.

I’m already hearing hints of similar things from Warlords of Draenor. Apparently a major feature of the endgame is story quests… that can only be completed once a week.

How much you want to bet none of the story arcs can be completed in less than a month?

Again, gating like this is nothing but a naked cash grab, at the expense of good gameplay. We can never know for sure why so many people are leaving the game, but for my part, I find forced tedium like this is one of the things driving me away from the game. It’s no less annoying and no less transparent than the way Neverwinter spams the entire server when someone gets a fancy mount from a lockbox.

WoW is now nearly as aggressive in its monetization as many of the greedier free to play games, but without the advantages of a low barrier to entry or being able to control how much you spend. At least in free to play games, you have the choice: pay, or grind. In WoW, you have to do both.

So we put some rep in your rep, so you can grind while you grind.On the other hand, as the hemorrhaging of subscribers continues, it becomes increasingly likely that Blizzard will take radical action to stem the bleeding. That could be very bad, but it could also be very good.

Of course, the possibility of WoW dropping the mandatory subscription is always on the table. This is what I hope for, and I do consider it an inevitability. The only question is when.

I could very well be wrong, but my prediction remains that WoW will become free to play or buy to play beginning with the expansion after Warlords of Draenor.

It’s important to remember that F2P/B2P isn’t necessarily the option of last resort any more. All that needs to happen is for someone at Blizzard to determine they’d make more by dropping the sub, which may not be that far off considering how the game is already leaning more and more on cash shop revenue.

Dropping the sub isn’t the only radical change they could make, though. They could also reexamine their model for delivering new content, because right now it seems like their current strategy isn’t working.

For three expansions in a row now, they have gone roughly a year without new content. Each time, they’ve sworn to do better next time. Each time, they’ve failed. Assuming rumours of an October release are true (and I certainly don’t think it will come any sooner), Warlords of Draenor will arrive after the longest content drought in WoW’s history. That’s despite the fact WoD is a very conservative expansion that has far less to offer than those before it.

A player garrison in World of Warcraft: Warlords of DraenorMost would agree that this most recent loss of subscribers is probably due to the months upon months without new content. Everyone would agree that there is no excuse to go that long without an update in a game that charges a monthly subscription just to play, especially considering that most other MMOs on the market do not charge a mandatory subscription and offer new content at a higher rate.

The Secret World, for instance, has a fraction of a fraction of WoW’s money and resources, but its longest content drought to date was only six months — and that’s if we don’t count an all new holiday event in the interim.

Hell, Guild Wars 2 updates every two weeks.

I don’t what’s going on behind the scenes at Blizzard, but it’s clear their current strategy for expansion releases is broken. I think it’s time to ask whether they should just stop releasing full expansion packs altogether.

Instead, they could just keep releasing more and more content patches. Smaller updates more often. Similar to the strategy used for Mists of Pandaria’s content patches, but on a larger scale.

* * *

Those are just some ideas for how Blizzard can stop the bleeding. I’m sure there are others I haven’t thought of. But we know they have to do something, and whatever they decide could make or break the game.

My warlock showing off her legendary cloak in World of WarcraftThat’s what we should be worried about. That’s why these subscriber losses are a relevant concern. WoW isn’t dying, but it does need a course correction, and what direction Blizzard chooses will have a dramatic impact on all of us who enjoy World of Warcraft.

StarCraft: I’m Just Going to Say It

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Brood War was really bad.

The Zerg invade Augustgrad in the StarCraft: Mass Recall modAll right, let’s back up a minute. I should give some context here.

First of all, I’m only talking about the campaign, and specifically its story. Brood War helped give birth to the modern world of eSports, so obviously the multiplayer aspect was great.

The story, though…

I just finished playing through the Mass Recall mod that recreates the original StarCraft campaigns in SC2. I did encounter a few more bugs as I made my way through, but nothing game-breaking, and I stand by my original comments on Mass Recall: It’s great, and you should play it.

This was the first time I’d played through the Brood War campaign since I was a kid. I didn’t remember much about it beyond the broad strokes, and I hadn’t even played it that much back then due to the high difficulty and my gaming skills (or lack thereof) at the time. So I had little to no nostalgia surrounding Brood War, and it was almost like I had never played it before.

And as I played through it, it became clear to me: This is not a good story.

Of course, many StarCraft fans see Brood War as the pinnacle of video game story-telling, a brilliantly tragic story of intrigue and ruthless politics.

The UED occupy Augustgrad in the StarCraft: Mass Recall modI’m sorry, but that’s just baloney.

There is no intrigue in Brood War. It’s just a case of Kerrigan lying to everyone and having them all believe her because… the writers said so, I guess. It’s not like Kerrigan’s even a particularly good liar — her plots are incredibly transparent, and become more so with every passing mission. But the entire cast still swallows every word she says like it’s gospel.

I could maybe buy the Protoss being dumb enough to fall for her lies once — maybe — but they just keep making the same mistake over and over again. Aldaris outright told Zeratul that she was controlling Raszagal, and then Kerrigan proved it more thoroughly by murdering Aldaris for telling her secret.

And Zeratul does absolutely nothing. He continues doing everything Raszagal says and is utterly shocked when Kerrigan finally reveals the truth.

And for that matter, if Kerrigan had control of Raszagal all along, why did she have to invade Shakuras and take her hostage?

A carrier could arrive through the plot holes in this game.

Duran confronts Stukov in the StarCraft: Mass Recall modIt makes no sense to me, either, that Fenix would choose to go along with Kerrigan after she betrayed the Protoss on Shakuras. If the UED can have perfect knowledge of everything that’s happening in the Koprulu Sector despite having no presence there whatsoever (How does that work, anyway?), surely Zeratul could have sent Fenix a message to say, “Yeah, Kerrigan isn’t very trustworthy. Don’t listen to her.”

I don’t even buy the idea that they needed to side with her to defeat the UED. I don’t see the UED as all that big of a threat. At worst, they’re just another Terran dictatorship. Even with the Overmind under their control, they’re not all that much worse than Mengsk.

The only thing that might have justified everyone’s terror of the UED is if they were planning to do some kind of Nazi-esque purge of all those they deemed impure, but that was never mentioned in-game, and it wouldn’t make sense anyway because Brood War also retconned the entire identity of the UED by including ghosts and psychics in their ranks, when the whole concept of their culture was that they rejected all “impure” humans, including telepaths. That’s how Terrans wound up in the Koprulu Sector to begin with.

Either way, Kerrigan is obviously a greater threat than the UED could ever be. If anything, people should have been making “enemy of my enemy” alliances with the UED against Kerrigan, not the other way around.

Speaking of the UED, Dugalle has got to be one of the best examples of how bad the writing in Brood War was. The dude’s so over the map he almost comes across as schizophrenic.

Stukov's funeral in the StarCraft: Mass Recall modAt the beginning of the campaign, he goes on a rant about he can never trust Duran because he’s a traitor, but then the rest of the UED campaign up until Duran’s betrayal essentially consists of Duran saying “Jump” and Dugalle asking, “How high?”

Dugalle inexplicably even sides with Duran against his lifelong friend Stukov, despite the obvious evidence of Duran’s betrayal. He murders his best friend just because Duran said so.

As an aside, Stukov is perhaps the only character in the entire campaign who acts like a mentally sound adult, and he’s one of the few saving graces of Brood War. I am now reminded why he is a fan favourite.

Ultimately, Brood War feels incredibly pointless, as well. Almost nothing actually happens — that is, the state of the Koprulu Sector is little changed by the end. Kerrigan takes over the Swarm, and the Protoss settle Shakuras. That’s about it. The UED got roflstomped, so they end up as nothing but a strange footnote in StarCraft lore.

The only other lasting impact is the deaths of what feels like half the game’s cast, and this is perhaps the worst part of Brood War. If not for all the deaths, Brood War could be written off as a bizarre but forgettable tangent, but we lost a lot great characters.

The opening cutscene of Omega in the StarCraft: Mass Recall modDuke was a bastard who got what was coming to him, but Fenix and Aldaris are dearly missed. Looking at him through mature eyes, I’ve come to realize Aldaris was actually one of the game’s most interesting characters, and everybody loved Fenix.

They didn’t even get good or heroic deaths. They were just shanked like prison snitches and left to rot.

The only goal Brood War seems to have had as a story was to build Kerrigan up as a terrifying villain that the players will truly hate, but even there, it fails. The ten year wait for Kerrigan’s reckoning robbed Brood War of any emotional payoff, leaving it as a pointlessly bleak and ultimately depressing game.

It also fails because it doesn’t make Kerrigan seem frightening at all. All of her successes are down to everyone else’s mind-boggling incompetence rather than any cunning on her part.

Never in this campaign does one get the impression Kerrigan even has a chance of failure. She effortlessly deceives everyone and wins every battle without fail. Thus, there is no drama. The outcome seems preordained.

A carrier hovering over Aiur in the StarCraft: Mass Recall modThe only good thing about Brood War — aside from Stukov — is the Dark Origin secret mission, which is a brilliantly chilling piece of foreshadowing and has more relevance to the greater arc of the StarCraft universe than the whole remainder of the Brood War campaign.

All in all, Brood War is one of Blizzard’s all-time worst stories, rivaled only by Burning Crusade in its destructive pointlessness. The original StarCraft and Wings of Liberty both had their stumbles, and Heart of the Swarm was very disappointing, but all of those are still much better than Brood War was.

New article:

My latest contribution to Nexopia is Sci-Fi Novels That Changed the Face of Literature. From War of the Worlds up to the Hitchhiker’s Guide.

I wonder if the war with the Martians would have gone better if the humans had more towels?