I’d be curious to see the fluctuations and what decisions were made at the time.
All the Negative Nancy’s would pounce so that isn’t happening though. You have people here who use the stances Blizzard takes in other countries to fuel their hatred and look for any and every reason to hate the company they give money to every month.
Right? That’s some Freudian issues right there. Ha.
Actually, it wasn’t incorrect. Only the first part was specified towards you and the comment you made. The second part was more generalized towards those who become defensive and act like it’s not important because it’s used against Blizzard (even if that’s not the intent) – when they would be the first ones to use it for them, to boast about how it’s so successful. Oh the irony.
They stopped posting subs when WoD was completely disastrous and they lost almost half their playerbase in a few months.
They boasted about 10 million subs then lost almost 1 million subs a month until they were down to about half the surge from WoD release.
They have been making absolutely horrible decisions about the game since then and don’t want to give people any proof of that by releasing sub numbers. It makes them look absolutely horrible in the public view.
Because there are other ways to pay now that don’t count as a sub.
Buying blocks of game time doesn’t count as a sub, but more importantly now, using tokens doesn’t count as a sub.
So instead, they list monthly active users (MAUs) on their reports and track that.
They say it’s better data, but the truth is that those numbers got too embarrassing to show to the shareholders.
As someone who was a shareholder, I believe they should show active subs.
How ironically hypocritical. You were the first to read something into the OP’s likely innocent question in a manner that was, as you say, desperately defensive. I’m usually at odds with Tovi on these forums, but the undead bovine seems to be onto something this time.
The way I look at it is if it was awesome they would brag, if they are quiet maybe not so good, They have never been humble when things are going good. In fact they have a bad habit of over selling if they worry about something. Imho.
I agree. For me, it has always been “Is the game fun for me.” It could have 20 million players, but if I don’t find it enjoyable then I don’t play. Conversely, it could have 20,000 players and as long as I enjoy myself/am able to participate in the content I choose to participate in, I am happy as a clam. More people does not objectively make the game fun, nor does less people make it objectively less fun.
Well you are certainly entitled to your opinion. However, it is very telling that no other company has ever released sub numbers. SWtOR didn’t when they were sub based. ESO didn’t when they were sub based. FFXIV didn’t, and still does not, even though they are still sub based. The numbers may be important to you, and that is fine, but they are clearly not important to investors.
No. I made blanket statements covering the usual reasons why people ask for subscriptions, or why Blizzard stopped boasting about them. Nice try, though.
… yeah… i mean… having the biggest quarterly increase ever in the last quarter must be such a downer for them. 
thankfully, they’ve got people like you to keep reminding everyone “the game is dying”. 
Correct. Why would they, as some people claim, bundle ALL of their games into one MAU because it’s better data, when the total users across all of their games is currently only 1/3 of what their subs for one game used to be? That makes absolutely no sense.
Truth is, they have nothing to boast about and the competition is likely right there with them. They used to post numbers all the time, and as press releases for the whole world to see. The Xbox used to do the same thing, until they got trounced.
But like others have said it doesn’t really matter. It’s still amusing to watch some folk twist and turn things around.
Probably because the numbers are something to be embarrassed about rather than boast about. Wow used to be king of the hill. Those days have long passed and it’s a descent from here on out. Best case the sub numbers level out, which they probably have already.
I’d imagine so many left because the devs started a war on flying back in WoD.
It could be that they simply changed the metric they feel is important to judge success by. Lots of companies I have worked for have done that. Times change. Tech changes. Shareholders change (and sometimes what they think matters).
It is a business. You can formulate some basic reasoning from that. 
Because simpletons kept using subs as the only metric to measure performance.
I know the technical reason. I was being facetious.
Ah, yes…the standard methodology of professional politicians; if caught in a hypocrisy, back-peddle. “Nice try, though.”
You might have intended to be ‘blanket’ in your reply, but that isn’t what you did. You directly referred to the OP three times with the word “you”, with two specific examples of why you felt their motives in particular were nefarious.