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2.7 million sales . Something prove for both those who love and hate WoW depending how you look at i
roo67
Member Posts: 402
I guess ultimatly boths haters and lovers of WoW can take something from the figures .
Remember they are an approximation still Blizzard states this themselves but lets for arguements sake assume they are correct .
For haters . Blizzard didnt't release day one figures for MoP and waited till they could put a possative spin on them . As industry analysts have pointed out this still points to a 30 percent decline overall since the release of cataclysm and WoW is expected to continue its slow downward trend in a few months time .
For Lovers . Its a vindication for Blizzard that MoP wasn't as badly recieved as some peolple had suspected . Its boosted subscriber numbers by a million and whos to say the downward trend will continue . Warcraft has bucked the tred many times before .
I still play WoW now and again but I wouldn't say I love it as much as I once did nor do I hate it .So i'll try and take the balanced view . I was there at the start of MoP for about a week untill my sub ran out . I havn't brough MoP ( i ll wait untill its on offer sometime in the future ) . What I saw was a boost in players but when I compare the number of high/full english speaking servers at release of MoP to Cata there were 15-18 compared to 35-40 . Which was quite a drop . There were a few locked servers and few more medium ones and a lot of low severs .
I have looked at the us realm status servers they appear to be doing a lot better than the EU ones so maybe being fair the bulk of the boost in subs come from them and not the EU ones .
My thoughts about the annoucement of the 2.7 is Blizzard choosing to use the word appoximately to describe the numbers when they were talking about Cataclysm were quite happy to use "over 3.3. million " and not approximately 3.3 million .
Maybe I'm getting cynical in my old age but when I hear a politician saying something is approximately this or that I tend to get the feeling hes putting a possative spin on something . You see approximations are evasive by thier nature they arn't exactly lies but theres a lot of room for maneuvre when you use the word .
Say a politican says theres approximately been a loss of 3 million dollar on something or another and it turns out to be 4 million . When hes questioned about this his answer will always be "it was only an approximation based on what sources gave us at the time " .
This makes me think Blizzard may have used analysts numbers from the likes of Brean, Murray, Carret and Co rather than data they have collected themselves .
Then again I could be wrong . Approximately is just a word after all . It could be a slip of the tounge . But then again the devil could be in the details .
Edit that title should read " prove something " .
Comments
"I'm sorry but your mmo has been diagnosed with EA and only has X number of days to live."
Not that suprising, I thought it would be less actually.
They have alienated a lot of players with this addon (wtf..kung fu panda?) and MANY have quit before it's release (including myself)
The funny thing is they still claim to have 10-11 million members, yet only 2.7 have bought the addon over the first week (compared to previous addons which sold over 3 mil on day 1). Hmm..... :P
Hello, does anyone really knows if Blizzard still have 10milion subscribers, as I was reading that this number is not correct: if someone buys 2 game cards, this count as 2 subscribers, is that correct? Thx for the answer.
Well, with a playerbase of still around 9-10 mln, had you really expected anything else?
However, SWTOR had around 2 mln sales after launch and GW2 apparently too, so that's not that far off compared to WoW's sales number, pretty damn close actually. Also, 2.7 mln sales for a 10 mln playerbase - or let's say half of that outside of China - not that impressive imo.Game is 8 years old for God sakes. If GW2 and SWTOR sells 2+ million expansion packs after 8 years and have player base of around 10 million then come back and tell us how you feel.
Not impressed...yeah no surprise there. People have been trying to down play success of WOW for years now.
im still kinda confused why anyone gives two snots about WoW's XP selling X amount. if WoW has 2mill users then its pretty self evident that 2mill will buy the xp. so going "oh GW2 only sold 1mill copies but wow's xp sold 2mill" is dumb. thats like the old mcdonalds total burgers sold sign...
now if blizzard makes a WoW 2.0 and that sells 2mill copies then ill be impressed. until then, who cares about XPs
people still playing wow will have to buy it so the numbers arent really impressive at all 
But was MOP released in China and Brazil, if not then you can see why the sales would not reflect the sub base.
You know something? insider informaiton? would like to share with rest of us your facts?
Actually....
It IS disappointing when you compare WoW against, well....WoW. When the player base is several TIMES what they sold in expansions, that is disheartening. I think it's very telling, and it's not telling anything good. Other xpacs sold more than MoP. This is a downward shift even if small.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
For an 8 y/o game 2.7 millions boxes are not bad at all, decline or not.
I didn't bouight MOP because I don't like Pandas, but kudos to Blizzard for convincing 2.7 Millions the expansion was good enough
BC, WOTLK , Cata all sold not even half compared to their total player base. yes they sold more than MOP but if you are going to compare it to the total population, back then WOW had 11 million players. So i guess WOW has been telling us something for 6 to 7 years now? guess all those expacs were disheartning too.
MoP was not released in china during that number count. But still it says something when a 8 year old game manages to sale more copies of its expansion then most new MMO's coming out.
Just an FYI. Not only did i not get the figures wrong, but it is as bad as I claimed. For the record not a hater of WoW itself, but of those who took it to the terrible direction they took it to without the slightest concern for players needs or innovation.
http://www.vg247.com/2012/09/28/mists-of-pandaria-sales-below-expectations-says-analyst-firm/
Huge typo in two places, 1st is the claim that it was 700k first week, it was the actual sales the first day.
Second, their comparison to Cata's sales fails to take this time period into account. Cata's sales were 3.3mil the first day not the first week.
http://venturebeat.com/2010/12/13/record-braking-world-of-warcraft-cataclysm-sells-3-3m-units-in-its-first-day-of-sales/
Claiming that these sales are a good thing, for a company as big as bllzzard is being nearsighted. 2.7 mil in the first week is a warning sign.
And finally it's only a matter of time for people to burn thru it because there was such little content people burned thru it in two months on the test servers.
Oh and comparing the elephant in the room who has multiple expansions numbers with untested IP's first release is just nonsense.
I deal with the facts. Sorry.
Shh...don't tell them that MOP wasn't released in China.
Well, with a playerbase of still around 9-10 mln, had you really expected anything else?
However, SWTOR had around 2 mln sales after launch and GW2 apparently too, so that's not that far off compared to WoW's sales number, pretty damn close actually. Also, 2.7 mln sales for a 10 mln playerbase - or let's say half of that outside of China - not that impressive imo.Game is 8 years old for God sakes. If GW2 and SWTOR sells 2+ million expansion packs after 8 years and have player base of around 10 million then come back and tell us how you feel.
Not impressed...yeah no surprise there. People have been trying to down play success of WOW for years now.
? Chill your nipples. I'm not raining down on WoW's parade or that of WoW fans, just adding some perspective. Nowhere did I say that it wasn't an achievement what WoW has accomplished, or that 2.7 mln is trivial. Only the gap with other main contenders has grown a lot smaller when you look at launch sales figures, as the 2 mln of SWTOR and GW2 show (which isn't trivial either). And 2.7 mln sales for a 9-10 mln playerbase of which 1 mln is purely returnees (the jump from 9.1 mln subs to 10 mln subs at MoP launch), well, you have to admit that's kinda meagre: an expansion comes out, you have a lot of people that had left resubbing, and then you still have only 2.7 mln of your whole playerbase buying the game. Unless China WoW players are 7 mln, that's fairly low.And I don't see anything bad with that. WoW is still doing great, only the difference with other MMO's isn't as massive as it was anymore, which can only be good for everyone. You see it alrdy, with Blizzard ramping up their development schedule where they'd been lazy-assing beforehand. More competition and diversity is always better.
Note quite. I'm pretty sure the entire Asian market doesn't have to pay for expansions, which is one reason absolute sales isn't as important as subscription and game time numbers.
Also, I know quite a few people who are just getting back into the game. Since you don't actually need the expansion to play the Pandaren race (only to play a monk and 86-90 content), every one of them has decided not to purchase the expansion until they actually need to, assuming they even stick with the game long enough to need to.
Anyway, I have no clue what the current sub numbers are or anything. Just wanted to say that it's not quite as simple as assuming 2.7 million sales must mean the 10+ million subs number is way off the mark.
And before anyone calls me a fanboi or whatever, I personally don't enjoy the game anymore, and adding kung fu panda and pokemon to the mix didn't help. I still hold two subs up, because my 8 year old daughter likes to play it with me, but that's it. And it should probably give people a good idea of what Blizzards target audience is...
You make me like charity
It IS disappointing when you compare WoW against, well....WoW. When the player base is several TIMES what they sold in expansions, that is disheartening. I think it's very telling, and it's not telling anything good. Other xpacs sold more than MoP. This is a downward shift even if small.
I have to ask. What do you expect? every expansion in wow to sell more then the last and it to forever continue to increase? Lets find and name any other 8 year old MMO that has managed to sell over 2 million copies of its expansion on day one? Heck lets go as far as to say lets find a younger MMO that has sold over 2 million copies of its expansion on day one.
My nipples qre quite chilled just took them out of the freezer.
I am talkign about how you so nicely added 'not impressed' as if 8 year old game selling 2+ million in expansions is just an every day thing. And no MOP isn't even released in china yet. Maintaining that huge amoutn of player base is an achievement in itself even though i havent played WOW in 4 years.
Give credit where credit is due whether you are impressed or not.
so stop saying it has 10 million subs then when it doesn't. it has 10 million unique accounts including mine that has been frozen since 2008.
Thats not true, cause at one point it had 12million subs...How does it have less now than it did before if its just unique accounts? lol
Just one of the many conspiracies, I like the one that its actually 12 million characters not accounts! lol
Can you prove that it is not true?