I think we all saw this coming. It will jump back up to 8-10m once WoD is released, but the days of 10M+ all the time are long gone in the setting sun of WoW.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV Have played: You name it If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
Originally posted by Aeonblades I think we all saw this coming. It will jump back up to 8-10m once WoD is released, but the days of 10M+ all the time are long gone in the setting sun of WoW.
I agree that we'll never see the 10+ million for long stretches of time for WoW. I would even be surprised if they hit 10 million with the latest launch. WoW could probably have the longest "sunset" of any mmo in history.
I signed up for alpha access about a month ago. I've heard absolutely nothing from them since.
Is this standard operating procedure?
If your car needs gas, do you wait for the gas to come to you?
Pleae explain how that analogy makes sense in the context of signing up for alpha and waiting for the developer to respond. Are you implying that he go to their headquarters and forcefully make one of them accept his application?
is the expac bring back talent trees and actually being able to make a choice with your character every level?
no?
*turns away sadly
That's what kept me from buying the last xpac.
My experience with WoW has basically been like "crack... if it had an expiration date". I'd played it once as vanilla, and again after Cat for about 2 months apiece. I played it more often during that time than any other MMO I ever played... sometimes to literally unhealthy levels("maybe I should eat something, today...").
But in both cases, one day I would log in, run around for a bit, then abruptly ask myself, "why am I doing this?". With no answer in sight, I logged out, uninstalled, and that was it.
As you said, I've heard about some things in WoD that sound pretty appealing. But the lack of customization of skills is a huge turnoff. I doubt I'll go back, especially since I'll probably only play a couple months, anyway.
They now are hanging out on games like Archeage (in it's current 1.2 form) , NWO, and GW2's current economy talking about how wonderful they are. These three games are terrible in that they charge WAY over the top with their heavy RNG currency conversion P2W eastern structures.
for the record, GW2 is in no way P2W. The effect from the boosters is negligible compared to doing events as far as experience is concerned, and it isnt that hard to get to level 80 (though quite a few rush and miss most of the game along the way.) The cash store is based more around cosmetic items, usually limited time sale ones. Legendaries aside, the best gear is either pretty cheap, or in the case of Ascended items account bound which you have to make. Pretty much if you want to waste real cash on those items you are doing that, wasting cash, and nothing in the game is really P2W as you imply.
I find it interesting the comments that "WoW still has more subs than the next game" and "still a good number for a 10 year old game." The reason I find this interesting is that we are talking about a game which had a peak of 12 million subs. It took 6 years to hit that peak, but 4 to drop to almost half that, with 3 million subs going within this last expansion cycle
And for Blizz's comment that this is normal at the end of an expansion cycle, and those buying that story, it's dead wrong. Going by the graph Pepeq linked in an earlier post this drop off has only happened once before, prior to the start of this expansion. Both WoW->BC and BC->LK subs were on the rise and LK->Cata it had plateued at the 12 million peak.
Given the competition out there, Blizz will need to do something to attract new players to replace the ones that leave through natural loss, let alone those who outright leave (like myself), otherwise the downward trend will continue
I think that they are desperate, quite clearly they are bringing out the movie to support the decline and to gather new/returning players. i left at siege of orgrimmar and now that WoD is arriving i will say im not going back unless it goes f2p, not because its failing because its going to start failing with the higher quality of new age f2p mmos that dont look like ps2 games. they should either step their game up WAY higher or just make it f2p with the cash shop and all.
I guess you quoting me out of context was also unintentional, right?
Quoting you "out of context" wasn't a question of intention. It was a question of interpretation/ understanding. I simply misinterpreted/ misunderstood your post as it seems. I don't think that the way I understood it is completely irreproducible, but you cleared things up now. It shouldn't be the first time something like this happened in a forum. No reason to get cocky, right
MMOGs shouldn't have an "end of expansion lifecycle". This is just an excuse for not having enough game play to last 2 years despite the $40 initial cost of the Xpack and $15/mo per subscriber to make enough content interesting to millions of the players as well as add enough content during the time between Xpacks to keep the game interesting.
I mean, what could you make if you had 8,000,000x$15 every month to create content with (minus upkeep of course, which is really only a small chunk of that $120,000,000).
Speaking of not interesting - can you say "Mists of Pandaria"? Not. Interesting. Well okay it has some good points, but overall, not really.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
6.8 million, 6.4 million. who cares? I would like to see the real number of subs that are not in Chinas alternate pay system. I am willing to bet that the American player base has dropped to under 2 million.
I played WoW for 10 years. Started in the beta for Vanilla and loved the game. With the release of The Burning Crusade expansion I was drawn in and the level of difficulty left me drooling over the content. Then the nerf came in the latter half of TBC and I was left with a sinking feeling.
With the mass advertising campaign of Wrath of the LIch King I was anticipating an amazing story line and was left wanting for the level of mechanics and detail that Vanilla and TBC had. The spank and tank dungeons and raids left me feeling empty.
Then came Cataclysm and Blizzard rewrote everything and made a pathetic attempt at humor. Felt like they took the War out of Warcraft.
Then came Pandaria and all I could do is shake my head at the low IQ requirement of the content. I was bored to death. The story left me feeling like I had stepped in something dirty. And then the year of nothingness really drove it home to me... Blizzard was running out of gas.
Now looking at the reports coming out of the alpha and Beta for WoD and the prelaunch debacle.. I have to wonder what the hell Blizzard is thinking. Yes Blizzard announced they were doing a stat squish... but when did they ever mention they were doing nearly a complete rewrite of our characters?
For those who arent up to date WoD is the lowest content expansion to date. As of right now, a day before it goes live the plan is for you players to follow a strict linear questing system to 100 then live in your garrisons and grind dailies till your eyes bleed to upgrade heroic gear.
If this sounds fun to all of you then have at it, I will spend my money more wisely elsewhere. Blizzard no longer deserves to have my hard earned money. This substandard quality and pathetic amount of content expansion is a complete rip off and shouldnt be tolerated.
Subs were back up to 7.4 million as of Sept 30, 2014. This thread (and the financial report are old). Also, just to note to the morons who continue to spout nonsense about "omg chinese subs" instead of saying dumb crap maybe actually look at the financial reports. Asia Pacific is like 15% of their revenue. Almost all their money comes from NA and EU, which also means most of the subs are in those regions. Money doesn't lie.
Another thing to keep in mind since we're so western minded round these parts, China, South Korea, Japan have lots of their own games that never make it here and are never discussed. WoW is probably not that popular outside of the west. It's a western game, by western devs (and truly the revenue shows it's not that big in Asia).
Subs were back up to 7.4 million as of Sept 30, 2014. This thread (and the financial report are old). Also, just to note to the morons who continue to spout nonsense about "omg chinese subs" instead of saying dumb crap maybe actually look at the financial reports. Asia Pacific is like 15% of their revenue. Almost all their money comes from NA and EU, which also means most of the subs are in those regions. Money doesn't lie.
Another thing to keep in mind since we're so western minded round these parts, China, South Korea, Japan have lots of their own games that never make it here and are never discussed. WoW is probably not that popular outside of the west. It's a western game, by western devs (and truly the revenue shows it's not that big in Asia).
Not necessarily since afaik, paying for one hour in asia = being considered a sub for month. I also believe it's cheaper overall unless you play a crazy amount but I might be wrong. Point being 15% revenue does not equal 15% of sub base with their payment structures.
Subs were back up to 7.4 million as of Sept 30, 2014. This thread (and the financial report are old). Also, just to note to the morons who continue to spout nonsense about "omg chinese subs" instead of saying dumb crap maybe actually look at the financial reports. Asia Pacific is like 15% of their revenue. Almost all their money comes from NA and EU, which also means most of the subs are in those regions. Money doesn't lie.
Another thing to keep in mind since we're so western minded round these parts, China, South Korea, Japan have lots of their own games that never make it here and are never discussed. WoW is probably not that popular outside of the west. It's a western game, by western devs (and truly the revenue shows it's not that big in Asia).
Not necessarily since afaik, paying for one hour in asia = being considered a sub for month. I also believe it's cheaper overall unless you play a crazy amount but I might be wrong. Point being 15% revenue does not equal 15% of sub base with their payment structures.
This thread may be old, but it does not give you the right to use logic and explain things reasonably when it comes to Warcraft subs.
Subs were back up to 7.4 million as of Sept 30, 2014. This thread (and the financial report are old). Also, just to note to the morons who continue to spout nonsense about "omg chinese subs" instead of saying dumb crap maybe actually look at the financial reports. Asia Pacific is like 15% of their revenue. Almost all their money comes from NA and EU, which also means most of the subs are in those regions. Money doesn't lie.
Another thing to keep in mind since we're so western minded round these parts, China, South Korea, Japan have lots of their own games that never make it here and are never discussed. WoW is probably not that popular outside of the west. It's a western game, by western devs (and truly the revenue shows it's not that big in Asia).
Not necessarily since afaik, paying for one hour in asia = being considered a sub for month. I also believe it's cheaper overall unless you play a crazy amount but I might be wrong. Point being 15% revenue does not equal 15% of sub base with their payment structures.
Chinese players also end up paying more than their western counterparts who only pay fixed 15 bucks a month. No one factors that in while making these arguments.
Subs were back up to 7.4 million as of Sept 30, 2014. This thread (and the financial report are old). Also, just to note to the morons who continue to spout nonsense about "omg chinese subs" instead of saying dumb crap maybe actually look at the financial reports. Asia Pacific is like 15% of their revenue. Almost all their money comes from NA and EU, which also means most of the subs are in those regions. Money doesn't lie.
Another thing to keep in mind since we're so western minded round these parts, China, South Korea, Japan have lots of their own games that never make it here and are never discussed. WoW is probably not that popular outside of the west. It's a western game, by western devs (and truly the revenue shows it's not that big in Asia).
Not necessarily since afaik, paying for one hour in asia = being considered a sub for month. I also believe it's cheaper overall unless you play a crazy amount but I might be wrong. Point being 15% revenue does not equal 15% of sub base with their payment structures.
This thread may be old, but it does not give you the right to use logic and explain things reasonably when it comes to Warcraft subs.
He may be using logic (and correctly inferring that 15% of revenue will not equate directly with 15% of subs) however, the sheer amount of revenue WoW brings in means that it's not numerically possible that the small portion of Asia Pacific revenue equates to a larger subscription segment. I've done it before (in a previous thread) and I'm not going to take the time to do the numbers again, but suffice to say it's just not possible that most (a very large majority) of their subs are in the west) -aka they need $15 per month from their subs in order to match revenues. Otherwise their money is magically appearing. Like I said, I've gone through their financials before, not doing it again, you're welcome to for a more up to date snapshot.
doesnt matter if this is an old thread or not, the fact remains after this launch the numbers will drop once again. Blizzard hasnt learned from its past mistakes and the rule doesnt change just because its Blizzard:
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it.
Comments
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
I agree that we'll never see the 10+ million for long stretches of time for WoW. I would even be surprised if they hit 10 million with the latest launch. WoW could probably have the longest "sunset" of any mmo in history.
If your car needs gas, do you wait for the gas to come to you?
"My Fantasy is having two men at once...
One Cooking and One Cleaning!"
---------------------------
"A good man can make you feel sexy,
strong and able to take on the whole world...
oh sorry...that's wine...wine does that..."
Pleae explain how that analogy makes sense in the context of signing up for alpha and waiting for the developer to respond. Are you implying that he go to their headquarters and forcefully make one of them accept his application?
That's what kept me from buying the last xpac.
My experience with WoW has basically been like "crack... if it had an expiration date". I'd played it once as vanilla, and again after Cat for about 2 months apiece. I played it more often during that time than any other MMO I ever played... sometimes to literally unhealthy levels("maybe I should eat something, today...").
But in both cases, one day I would log in, run around for a bit, then abruptly ask myself, "why am I doing this?". With no answer in sight, I logged out, uninstalled, and that was it.
As you said, I've heard about some things in WoD that sound pretty appealing. But the lack of customization of skills is a huge turnoff. I doubt I'll go back, especially since I'll probably only play a couple months, anyway.
for the record, GW2 is in no way P2W. The effect from the boosters is negligible compared to doing events as far as experience is concerned, and it isnt that hard to get to level 80 (though quite a few rush and miss most of the game along the way.) The cash store is based more around cosmetic items, usually limited time sale ones. Legendaries aside, the best gear is either pretty cheap, or in the case of Ascended items account bound which you have to make. Pretty much if you want to waste real cash on those items you are doing that, wasting cash, and nothing in the game is really P2W as you imply.
I find it interesting the comments that "WoW still has more subs than the next game" and "still a good number for a 10 year old game." The reason I find this interesting is that we are talking about a game which had a peak of 12 million subs. It took 6 years to hit that peak, but 4 to drop to almost half that, with 3 million subs going within this last expansion cycle
And for Blizz's comment that this is normal at the end of an expansion cycle, and those buying that story, it's dead wrong. Going by the graph Pepeq linked in an earlier post this drop off has only happened once before, prior to the start of this expansion. Both WoW->BC and BC->LK subs were on the rise and LK->Cata it had plateued at the 12 million peak.
Given the competition out there, Blizz will need to do something to attract new players to replace the ones that leave through natural loss, let alone those who outright leave (like myself), otherwise the downward trend will continue
It surely will but the question is if it just will be for a month or if they will get permanently back.
WoD better be dang good.
Still, as long as they have a million+ subs there is little need to worry for Wow fans. It is more the Activision stock holders that is crying.
Sir Ginger, King of Nisa local shop.
I would get bored to if i had to pay a sub each month for the past 12 months without getting a single contend update.
I bought MoP for 10 euro resubbed played for 2 months and unsubbed again.
No way i keep my sub active for such a long stretch of time without updates.
What we do see tough is each new expansion it sold less and less since WoTLK as more and more players dont return for numerous reasons.
Highly doubt people stay in the game for the new models that are coming. The people that stay actually...this is crazy, but like it.
Not even sure the opinions of this forum cover that of a minority of mmo players.
Quoting you "out of context" wasn't a question of intention. It was a question of interpretation/ understanding. I simply misinterpreted/ misunderstood your post as it seems. I don't think that the way I understood it is completely irreproducible, but you cleared things up now. It shouldn't be the first time something like this happened in a forum. No reason to get cocky, right
^ This
MMOGs shouldn't have an "end of expansion lifecycle". This is just an excuse for not having enough game play to last 2 years despite the $40 initial cost of the Xpack and $15/mo per subscriber to make enough content interesting to millions of the players as well as add enough content during the time between Xpacks to keep the game interesting.
I mean, what could you make if you had 8,000,000x$15 every month to create content with (minus upkeep of course, which is really only a small chunk of that $120,000,000).
Speaking of not interesting - can you say "Mists of Pandaria"? Not. Interesting. Well okay it has some good points, but overall, not really.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
6.8 million, 6.4 million. who cares? I would like to see the real number of subs that are not in Chinas alternate pay system. I am willing to bet that the American player base has dropped to under 2 million.
I played WoW for 10 years. Started in the beta for Vanilla and loved the game. With the release of The Burning Crusade expansion I was drawn in and the level of difficulty left me drooling over the content. Then the nerf came in the latter half of TBC and I was left with a sinking feeling.
With the mass advertising campaign of Wrath of the LIch King I was anticipating an amazing story line and was left wanting for the level of mechanics and detail that Vanilla and TBC had. The spank and tank dungeons and raids left me feeling empty.
Then came Cataclysm and Blizzard rewrote everything and made a pathetic attempt at humor. Felt like they took the War out of Warcraft.
Then came Pandaria and all I could do is shake my head at the low IQ requirement of the content. I was bored to death. The story left me feeling like I had stepped in something dirty. And then the year of nothingness really drove it home to me... Blizzard was running out of gas.
Now looking at the reports coming out of the alpha and Beta for WoD and the prelaunch debacle.. I have to wonder what the hell Blizzard is thinking. Yes Blizzard announced they were doing a stat squish... but when did they ever mention they were doing nearly a complete rewrite of our characters?
For those who arent up to date WoD is the lowest content expansion to date. As of right now, a day before it goes live the plan is for you players to follow a strict linear questing system to 100 then live in your garrisons and grind dailies till your eyes bleed to upgrade heroic gear.
If this sounds fun to all of you then have at it, I will spend my money more wisely elsewhere. Blizzard no longer deserves to have my hard earned money. This substandard quality and pathetic amount of content expansion is a complete rip off and shouldnt be tolerated.
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
Necroing a months-old thread just to regurgitate conspiracy theories about Chinese subs and complain about gameplay being "dumbed down"= classic.
lol. Necrofail.
Subs were back up to 7.4 million as of Sept 30, 2014. This thread (and the financial report are old). Also, just to note to the morons who continue to spout nonsense about "omg chinese subs" instead of saying dumb crap maybe actually look at the financial reports. Asia Pacific is like 15% of their revenue. Almost all their money comes from NA and EU, which also means most of the subs are in those regions. Money doesn't lie.
Another thing to keep in mind since we're so western minded round these parts, China, South Korea, Japan have lots of their own games that never make it here and are never discussed. WoW is probably not that popular outside of the west. It's a western game, by western devs (and truly the revenue shows it's not that big in Asia).
Not necessarily since afaik, paying for one hour in asia = being considered a sub for month. I also believe it's cheaper overall unless you play a crazy amount but I might be wrong. Point being 15% revenue does not equal 15% of sub base with their payment structures.
This thread may be old, but it does not give you the right to use logic and explain things reasonably when it comes to Warcraft subs.
Chinese players also end up paying more than their western counterparts who only pay fixed 15 bucks a month. No one factors that in while making these arguments.
Time to stop beating the dead horse.
He may be using logic (and correctly inferring that 15% of revenue will not equate directly with 15% of subs) however, the sheer amount of revenue WoW brings in means that it's not numerically possible that the small portion of Asia Pacific revenue equates to a larger subscription segment. I've done it before (in a previous thread) and I'm not going to take the time to do the numbers again, but suffice to say it's just not possible that most (a very large majority) of their subs are in the west) -aka they need $15 per month from their subs in order to match revenues. Otherwise their money is magically appearing. Like I said, I've gone through their financials before, not doing it again, you're welcome to for a more up to date snapshot.
doesnt matter if this is an old thread or not, the fact remains after this launch the numbers will drop once again. Blizzard hasnt learned from its past mistakes and the rule doesnt change just because its Blizzard:
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it.
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery