Headline aside, it’s far from all bad news for Activision. Yes, the elephant in the subscription-based MMOG room has floundered a bit, with a subscription rate of only 9.6 million by the end of Q4 2012. That’s down 4% from World of Warcraft’s Q3 2012 return to the 10 million mark. Still a dominating number in the (dwindling) subgenre of subscriptionn-based titles.

What’s the good news? Activision had no problem making an incredible amount of money even though WoW had a hiccup during the period. We’re talking billions. Yeah, with a B. The company pulled in an impressive $1.77 billion in revenue for Q4 2012. An increase of nearly 26% over Q4 2011’s $1.41 billion.

The added cashflow was largely due to the Skylanders product, the unstoppable force that is the Call of Duty brand and the combined PC power of Diablo III and World of Warcraft. CoD and Skylanders helped make Activision Blizzard the #1 console and handheld publisher in the West.

MMO gamers know that holding the crown of the largest subscription MMOG is becoming easier and easier as more and more companies opt to launch or change their business model to the F2P model. The arguement continues on if this is the future of the genre or a result of WoW’s dominance.

What are your thoughts?

Funcom has been in the news a lot recently, not all of it on the happy side. Layoffs, c-level executive restructuring and subscription talk. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry, the new CEO Ole Schreiner discussed the later in relation to The Secret World. First and foremost, it’s important to note that the title is now a “profitable operation”.

Despite the influx of money from the current-day MMORPG, Schreiner stated the Funcom is willing and able to move the game to the F2P model if the decision makes sense. In fact, the company created the game from the get go with this possibility in mind.

“That said we definitely have the tools to turn The Secret World into a free-to-play game – or even hybrid – should we decide to do that somewhere down the line” said Schreiner. He went on to admit that the field is more difficult than previously due to the rise of the F2P business model. Yet that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

“I believe there is a market for free-to-play, subscription and hybrid business models. What’s most viable for your project depends on what sort of game you’re trying to make, what your focus is and how you’re going about putting it together. I do think that as that as free-to-play offerings keep raising the bar in terms of quality and longevity, it’s becoming more and more difficult for subscription games to live up to player’s expectations” he added.

Cowen and Company, an analyst group, has released a new report that states, subscription numbers for Star Wars: The Old Republic have already peaked in February and the game is currently in decline.

The reports states that from the game’s peak of 1.7 million subscribers, it has declined to about 1.25 million at the end of March, based on server statistics provided on TorStatus.net.

The report suggest that the reason for the decline is lack of end-game content. Cowen’s Doug Creutz stated the following,

We believe that the apparent decline in subscribers is most likely due to a lack of ‘end-game’ content for the title, meaning that players who hit the level cap have few compelling options in terms of ongoing game play. While the game got off to a good start, the relatively light amount of end-game content does appear to be taking a toll.

We believe EA is attempting to address the end-game content issue, including a recent major game update, but momentum appears to have stalled and we believe it is prudent to adopt a more conservative forecast on subscribers at this time.

For those of us following SWTOR, this comes at no surprise considering the amount of promotions EA and BioWare have been giving out over the last month.  Checking Xfire stats, you can also clearly see the the decline in activity for the game, although it looks like for April it’s plateaued a bit.

Sometimes it helps to take the honey with the vinegar, but not even the announcement for an impending third-quarter Diablo III beta test could soothe the sting of losing around 600,000 World of Warcraft subs over the past couple of months. It is now around 11.4 million, down from over 12 million. Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime had to break the news during the company’s quarterly conference call earlier today.

Like anything else, popularity ebbs and flows and the spikes and valleys on the sales charts can usually be linked to periods of new content or players losing interest in the old. The real problem is that the peaks aren’t lasting as long as they used to. Losing 600k is one thing, but the fact that it has happened faster after Cataclysm than it has following any previous expansion is the real kick-in-the-pants.

Undoubtedly, everyone will have their own take on the news and opinions as to why precisely people are leaving the game in such sizable chunks, but what it comes down to at the end of the day — the one idea that seems to remain constant — is fatigue. I don’t believe that people are tired of MMORPGs or even the story of Azeroth itself, but rather the way that Blizzard conducts itself and the ever (d?)evolving philosophy that shapes the game’s continued development.

World of Warcraft would not have reached such insane numbers of subscriptions if it weren’t for the casual players and as the Farmville-addled masses flooded the channels with their girth, Blizzard was forced to compensate. Always pushing towards equalization and homogenization; making things simpler and easier to understand; removing those elements from the formula that, while perplexing, also made WoW interesting. And we, the fans and media, are complicit.

Why? Well, we encouraged it. For better or worse, this is kind of what we wanted, but we didn’t know any better. Changes to the game over the past few years have been a double-edged sword, and Cataclysm has proven to be the sharpest, shiniest double-edged sword yet. Allow me to elaborate with a broad example: we’re tired of leveling through the same old vanilla content, so we get a vastly modified 1-60 game. Zones are more engaging visually, travel is streamlined, quests are given a spitshine to ensure that not all of them are simple “kill x/gather y” affairs (though many still are). And yet, for a better and more polished game, we also get a less “fun” experience. It’s okay one time through, but it becomes so damn easy and there is no sense of exploration left.

How else have we done it? We’ve killed any difficulty with boss encounters and completing quests beyond pure execution. We’ve created mods and posted comprehensive strategies on very high-profile websites, which has in turn prompted Blizzard to incorporate elements of such helpful third-party resources into the game itself. And yet that does not absolve the company’s reliance on casual players of blame, because an absolutely amazing number of players, even with all this help, still do not understand how to play. Continue Reading