Is WoW a dying game?
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it’s been dying since TBC, as some people claim.
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They’ve begun asking why people are unsubbing again when you go through the process so it shows they care enough about sub numbers to ask why it’s happening. It’s kinda strange how they won’t post what the active sub numbers are but i’m not sure if I’d say the game is dying.
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It lives, therefor it dies.
All things that live die. It is the only guarantee of Life.
The question shouldn’t be whether or not WoW is dying, but whether or not it is healthy.
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Everything in the universe that’s born/created begins to die. Nothing is permanent. May take a century, may take many millennia but things die eventually.
The key point is if it’s during your own lifetime. If not, who cares?
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I bet wow is under the 1 million subs mark by now given the state of BFA.
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Since 2004 ™
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This is a pretty high IQ take in comparison to: “well everyone says WoW is dying, therefore it’s not!!” and “wow is a dead game.”
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It’s been on the decline since early Cata. If “declining” is your definition of “dying”, then yes, WoW is dying.
There’s no reason to suspect that WoW is at anything but it’s lowest point ever right now. I don’t say that because I think BfA is terrible (I actually think it’s pretty average despite some of it’s design flaws and that people are just getting burnt out and not acknowledging it), I say it because that’s just how these things go.
If you take a look at the chart of WoW’s subs over time, it’s honestly a pretty linear decline from early Cata until the last reported subs in WoD, obviously normalized to account for xpacks/patches/lulls. If it had continued at that rate, we would have hit 0 subs 4-5 months ago.
But these trends slow dramatically as they approach 0. There’s no way to guess exactly where we are now. Are we still declining? Absolutely. Are we declining at a rate that should be worried about by the average player? Probably not, but who knows? Blizzard won’t tell us that.
In terms of sheer population and nothing else, WoW is probably still the #1 subbed to MMORPG. Neither Blizzard nor Square Enix reports subs so we don’t know for sure, but I’d honestly be surprised if Square Enix didn’t at least publicly take that claim if their expansion sold more copies than WoW’s expansion, since Blizzard still puts out those numbers and Square would know if they bumped ahead with a launch based on that.
In that sense, it would be odd to call the #1 MMO “dying” or “dead”.
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Most games don’t die they just fade away.
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According to GD every expansion it is dying but to someone who is having fun playing it won’t die till Blizzard pulls the plug.
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Since I’ve seen this topic for the last 14(15?) years:
No, obviously not.
Every expansion is “dying”, but then BFA has record preorder sales. So go figure. Even if people later “leave” the expansion, it was still an incredible success.
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/takes a shot
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If you do that every time one of these threads pop up… you’ll be dead in no-time. Not even a dwarf can handle that kind of alcohol poisoning!
Yes, all games currently being played are dying by definition. Everything alive is dying unless they are immortal, but because nothing immortal has been found yet, it is safe to assume yes, wow like everything else alive is dying.
Also, just food for thought, MOST MMORPGs would be considered a resounding success if they ever reached 1 million subs. WoW has always been an anomaly in that regard. It’s entirely possible that WoW is just seeing a return to the norm as players who don’t typically play MMOs leave, rather than actually dying. I don’t think there’s many who would deny that WoW has reached a lot of players who wouldn’t dream of touching anything else in the genre. Maybe that’s why we have so many “solo players”.
Seasons don’t fear the reaper, nor do the wind, the sun or the rain.
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It’s just gotten old over time and games have evolved so much since WoW came out. I still enjoy it to relax and for nostalgia though.
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Off topic, but I remember in Icewind Dale 2 you could create a Dwarf with very high stamina and win a drinking contest against a half-orc.
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I play both and I will say that both have their pros and cons. A lot of people from WoW are going to FF14, but I think with people’s level of expectations of WoW go to FF14, then that toxicity that they bring will seep over there and things my go the same way as they are with WoW right now.
FF14 is great, but it’s does have it’s own problems of their own. WoW is still the top MMO while being followed closely by FF14.