WoW Sees Decline in Chinese Players

Written by: QuintLyn Bowers (@QuintLyn) | May 17, 2012 4:00 pm

21 Comments

When it comes to World of Warcraft one of the most popular topic of conversations is whether or not it’s losing players. It seems that almost every other day someone is saying “It’s down.”, “It’s up.”, “It’s steady”.

And then come the speculations about why players are leaving if they’re actually leaving. Where are they going to?

Well, we may finally have some answers.

NetEase — the company that operates World of Warcraft in China — have recently released their first quarter report for 2012. And, while it seems that they are doing very well over-all they have seen some decline where WoW is concerned.

According to their report, the company’s self-developed games are growing in popularity and driving revenue.

According to an article in Gamasutra, NetEase has actually seen an increase in revenue to $289.2 million from from $221.3 million last year.

However, NetEase has said that the growth was offset somewhat by a revenue decline from World of Warcraft.

It’s not all bad news for WoW, though. NetEase did renew their contract with Blizzard for at least the next three years and have said they are pleased with the decision.

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7BitBrian

It’s expected, at least for me. No MMO, including WoW, will ever reach WoW’s highest numbers ever again. And it’s nothing to do with the actual game. We have more comparable and playable MMO games now than we used to, so those people are still playing, they just have a lot more games to choose from playing now. The market is much more spread out, which is a good thing. Don’t be surprised if you see WoWs numbers drop more, we are just now at the beginning of this change.
- http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
  
  Well WoW has the best chance of beating its record, even though it prbly never reach it. No MMO will reach the milestone World of Warcraft hit and regardless where the subs are the game still reached 12 Mill and that reach will be one thats either beaten by WoW or never reached.
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=730268533 David Macadam
    
    No MMO will ever top Blizzard astonishing feat of 12million subscribers. BUT a game (not an MMO) in the future (whos to say what form that game will be in, we may jack in with a plug straight into our brain) will for certain beat Blizzards mark of 12 million, I bet my left nut on that!
    - Sicarius09
      
      Especially if MMO developers try to get around gold selling. The reason they have so many “players” in China is for that very reason. Take away the Gold Selling players then see how many people are currently playing.
      
      Having said that Blizzard has managed to consistently create new content for players for a number of years now and it is always of great quality. They always have something up their sleeve to keep their subscribers interested.
    - Jaxa A
      
      Totally waiting for ‘The World’ aren’t you.
      
      But yeah it would be an interesting concept indeed.
  - Ravek
    
    The 12 million mark will be beaten soon enough. There are new Chinese born every day….
- Steven Thompson
  
  That is true with MMO’s, but other games like LoL see 3 times the player base than WoW does currently. Of course many people (like myslef) have registered 3 emails as LoL accounts so off course that number is a bit off, but still, 34 million accounts are a lot of people.
http://www.facebook.com/ReynardDudos Tim Mrahcg Perry

WoW declining? Sorry, I tuned out, was headbanging to that epic background music.
http://www.facebook.com/MyFebronia Michelle Brady

Because they’re on Illidan-US ffs
http://twitter.com/Pross182 Pross182

No game stays on top forever. The only people who care are the ones who want to see it fail so they can claim to be better than everyone else because they either never played WoW to begin with or are “one of the smart ones” who only played for Vanilla/BC and left when the game got “bad”…. and then people like me who just like to rant.
- http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
  
  Agreed, I love WoW and all and I personally think Wrath was best experience i had in WoW and I have been playing since 2005, but ya pple will play what they like its there money and ”
  The only people who care are the ones who want to see it fail so they can claim to be better than everyone else because they either never played WoW to begin with ” This quote was spot on and agree with it 100% the rest is just your opinion. but any how WoW is close to 8 years old and its still at 10.2 Mill and it toke 7 years for it to show any sign of decline, I think WoW will be around for along time still just like SWG was, Everquest 1/2 & GW1. There games that will have pple playing aslong as the servers are still running. I will one of those pple.
  - Jaxa A
    
    And, GW1 is still around even with its ‘child’ coming along. They are still releasing new content and everything with Guild Wars Beyond.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_HPTUCZ5LGSKBDDCGPY4KSD5LBM David Blain

Yes!!! finaly Gray is doing the news.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Milèd-Hammoud/100000268114142 Milèd Hammoud

If the Chinese players
play to escape real life then MoP having a Chinese theme is not
helping them do that…
RowlandBuck

I really dont care whats happening in China. But based on wowcraftrealms.com, wow has about 2.5 million american/oceanic players. That really doesnt put the game head and shoulders above other mmo’s in the US.
http://twitter.com/Nathiest Nathiest

Where can I get one of these contracts?
DoctorOverlord

I wonder what kind of self-developed games that company is making? There are several listed on their websites as MMOs, but no links to the games.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Kevin-H-Yang/1421433440 Kevin H. Yang

Wasn’t the decline caused by all the Chinese WOW players going to the Taiwan servers?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ronny-Sunrock/100002737688676 Ronny Sunrock

I have a question. Way does players care about how many subscribers a game have? Do they need other players to tell them that the game they play is good? Can’t they determine that by them self?
- ChaseWaliky
  
  A major part of an MMO is the player base and having people active. You need active players to keep economies going, have supplies in the AH, and being available for group content. One major issue I am seeing start to happen is there are no people active for random dungeons or raids, and a lot of players just wanna level alts or run content which is not possible without people on.
  - http://twitter.com/BrockPrescott Brock Prescott
    
    Soooo, with 10+ million and cross-server realms coming soon to Mists to specifically deal with that issue, I don’t see the validity of that point.
    
    Also, I agree with Ronny, there is faaaaaaaaaaaaaar too much focus on subscription numbers when it comes to talking about WoW. Take a moment and read nearly everyone’s comments on this site when a conversation for WoW pops up, it is all about subscription numbers and whatever new hotness is going to be “The WoW Killer”, that’s it, that’s the commentary that you see.
    
    I feel as if people are pigeon-holing any discussion into one of those two topics, so might I suggest, we focus on what makes the games we play fun, entertaining and coming back for more. Because, let’s face it, Blizzard along with any other gaming company are not stupid, they will listen to their majority player base and make decisions off of that.
    
    Whew!……I need a coffee :/

WoW Sees Decline in Chinese Players

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