Close to a million people have stopped paying for World of Warcraft in the last three months, about a year after the game launcher’s news panel happily proclaimed they had hit 12 million subscribers.
The 7.3% drop in subscribers was revealed by Activision Blizzard during talks about its latest financial results. Blizzard head, Mike Morhaime, said the biggest decline in player numbers were seen in the East and the Asia Pacific regions.
Singapore is very much a part of these statistics, with many gamers polled by us saying that they had given the game up a while before this latest headcount.
Many of them cited stale content as the main reason for stopping.
One unnamed player, whose main character is a Discipline Priest, said that she cancelled her subscription because even the raids were getting similar. “Once you’ve done one raid, you’ve done them all. The basic skillset you need to enjoy a raid never changes.”
Ex-World of Warcraft player Jonathan Gan, 21, said he stopped his subscription when he enlisted in National Service. “My monthly allowance is not enough to support the monthly fees.” He also added that the game was boring him: “killing monsters gives you no kick; no matter how hard you do it, you’re still just winning the AI.”
Activision Blizzard has been hard at work winning back its subscribers, however. It recently announced that players who commit to a year’s subscription to World of Warcraft would get a free copy of Diablo III, among other things.
On the other hand, there are still veteran players like Raksamsao of Dragonmaw embracing the game. This 22 year old Singaporean gamer, who plays a paladin, says that he’s been playing World of Warcraft all these years because he “lives to tea bag noobs.” Tea bagging is known to be a derogatory way of claiming victory over an opponent.
Games journalist John Walker of British gaming site Rock Paper Shotgun said that World of Warcraft had weathered similar dips in the past when there were other strong titles gamers wanted to play. And there have indeed been awesome game releases these past months, the most recent of which is The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. However, when asked if he subscribed to this trend, Raksamsao rubbished it with “Killing dragons? Meh.”
It certainly seems as though Singapore has been responsible for part of the subscription losses in the Asia Pacific region. Whether the trend will carry on is hard to say, since World of Warcraft has been active for nearly seven years now. In the meantime, check out the Mists of Pandaria site and perhaps you’ll add a number to the flagging subscriber rates!
