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Why do people care about the total subs a game has?
Servase
Member Posts: 180
Why does it matter to people at how many subscriptions a game has. As long as WAR has at minimum 200k subs, it will make more than enough money to dish out continuous updates and be deemed "successful". That's all you need to be successful, 200k subs, not 10mil.
Furthermore, if you like the game, why not buy it and play it? Why must there be 12million people playing the game in order for you to want to play it yourself. If you love the IP, the concept of the game, go play it.
Also, another key point. YOU will NEVER know how many people are ACTUALLY playing the game. Why? Companies lie, plain and simple. Apparently, large subscription numbers attract more players.
Blizzard's last milestone was 10million players, that was like 2 years ago. Right now the game is probably sitting at around 7million or less. But guess what? There's only around 2-3million people from North America that play the game. You don't play with the other 4+ million from asia (i.e china etc), they have their own servers. So of that 2-3 million, you don't even play with that many. There's something like 200 servers for North America. Each server supports around 10k (5k horde 5k alliance) players.
In the end, all you really need is a full server and a sufficent/adequate number of subs to keep the money flowing into the company for constant updates. I'm pretty sure that if WAR has 1million subs, they will have at least 5 servers that are full, so join one of those or a medium pop server.
Honestly, you will never know if a company has 7million subscribers. You can only play on one server at a time and each server can only hold at most 10k people. For WoW, that's 5k people per side. So at the very most, if EVERYONE logged in at the same time, You could play with 5k people. But considering there's hardly a server that is actually full, most of the time you're playing with half that amount.
So with that being said, Why does it matter how many people are really playing the game? If blizzard didn't state that 7-8million people were playing the game, you would never know. In fact, it would feel like much else, like the population cap of the server you play on. In short, play the game you want because you love it and STFU about financial issues of a company.
None of you are accountants or do anything in finance as a career so it's very unlikely that you know the financial situation of any company. OO... you can read a press report of reported sales. Doesn't mean you know anything about the numbers you're reading or the end result of anything you're reading or anything about the financial state of a company in general. Companies will cut jobs just because they want to make more money and get rid of positions that they don't need.
Funcom has probably been doing the worst of any MMO company out there, yet, they're still doing VERY well. They make a lot of money and nor AoC or Funcom will die out any time soon.
Play the game you want and who the hell cares about sub count or the success of another game. Also, don't try and quote financial reports as if you know what you're talking about.
Playing: WoW,
Played: Aion, AoC, Eve, EQ, EQ2, LOTRO, Runescape, Guild Wars, DAoC, Planetside, SWG, WAR, Darkfall
Wanting to try: DCU Online
Waiting For: Star Wars The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2.
Comments
WoW have 11mil now mate.
Unless there's a server merge, a low pop server will affect a player experiance quite substantialy. PQ, RvR, Economic ( though its non-existance in war), seeing other players running around ( we not playing a solo game), a good guild, etc etc...
All these and more will have adverse effect if the sub for a game is low...
RIP Orc Choppa
People care about subs because they are sick of playing on 'low' population servers.
Because they are an indication of where a game is heading. If you see constistently falling sub numbers you're eventually going to have to start wondering whether or not the publisher is going to keep the game running, or not in the case of games like Auto Assault.
You have to remember that MMORPGs are a business and if they are not financially viable, the plug will be pulled. This is why many people pay close attention to subs and stock values. They don't want to invest a huge amoutn of time, effort and subscription fees into something that might die after a year or so.
Sure ~200k might be enough to healthily sustain an MMO like WAR, but what if EA suddenly decide it's not enough, or not growing at the rate they'd like? They could quite easily pull developers from WAR and put them onto something else (like SOE did with Vanguard). That can only result in a slowdown or complete halt on developments, expansions and bug fixes.
Oh and WoW's subscription base is 11 million by the way.
It matter for people with kid mentality. They wanna play what everybody plays so they are cool and are part of the rest of people who all play the same thing. Is just that. As you say, you only need a full server to have a good gameplay experience, but it doesnt matter, they wanna play what everybody plays, just that.
Find me a 'full' server in War please.
Don't know where you get your information. But you obviously just made it up.
Jan 08 Blizzard press release says 10M players (for the first time)
July 08 Blizzard press release says 10.7M players
Oct 08 Blizzard press release says 11M players.
So yeah, I don't know why you say Blizzard announced 10M players 'years ago' and is currently sitting at 7M, when it takes like 2 mins to check the Blizzard site and read the press releases yourself. But nice try.
Also.. subscribers are a symptom of the problem, and also a cause of them. The exodus of players from Warhammer is a sign that players just didn't like the gameplay all that much. The scenario grind just got OLD very fast and combat was clunky and boring... losing subscribers is a symptom of that. But low populations are also a cause of low population. For almost 2 months now, a large percentage of players were playing on ghost town servers. There are no longer any real high/high servers and med/med servers seem very empty (especially in the pvp area). On those ghosttown servers, you are basically forced to do nothing but solo pve (no pqs) and scenarios (no rvr). Server mergers will help this, but they aren't coming fast enough. My guess is that within a month, some of the servers people are being transfered TO, will soon be ones that people can transfer off of.
Also, I know it seems unfair, but you can't compare an average Warhammer server to a WOW server. They are different games. WOW is basically a solo, casual pve game, with grouping for instances. The designers of WOW put a majority of their time into quests and solo content. On a lower population server in WOW, you can still enjoy the game the way the developers designed the game. In Warhammer, the game is designed around RvR, on low population servers, you can't really participate in the thing that the game is designed around, you are stuck queueing for scenarios as the only real way to advance your character.
And you lost all credibility when you talked about Funcom doing 'very well'. Last quarter they sold more boxes of AOC then they are going to ever sell again, and they still lost 8M dollars and are in real danger of going bankrupt in the next few months. They were never profitable, and borrowed a ton of money to make AOC and if they weren't profitable last quarter, they are never going to be profitable.
No, the kid mentality is to think people play WOW because WOW is so popular. The truth is that WOW is so popular because it is FUN. Warhammer is basically dying becasue it is not fun.
People may try a game based on it's subscriber numbers, but they will only subscribe if they are having fun.
People are Lemmings that's why
Hilariously ironic that you're call others "kids" while in the very same post you're pretending that WAR is somehow "dying". Priceless! Given how succesful WAR has been so far, it seems the vast majority of players do in fact find it "fun", despite it having been out of beta for only 1½ months. Clearly some don't though, and the game certainly needs some more polish and fixes, but dying? No, on the contrary, the future is looking extremely bright for WAR at this point.
I won't try to speak for everyone, but I can say why I personally enjoy looking at the numbers and sometimes analyze them to death:
I simply love this game genre, and have an interest in seeing what people like; what attracts players to a game and what pushes them away. I also have no faith in this forum community or any other ever being a good representation of the player community surrounding the genre; I prefer to go by what people actually do, not by what people claim they do. Factual numbers are thus a good tool.
As for those claiming public financial numbers required by law are pure lies from the companies, these people will always exist for as long as there are soapboxes to stand on and forums to post on. Sad but true. One should always pay very close attention to the wording in what a company says though - just like the company itself does. ;-)
Personally I could hardly care less for how many plays a game when it comes to my own enjoyment of that game. As long as there are enough people on the server/realm I'm on to create a community, I'm happy, whether it's WoW or Rubies of Eventide.
They want to be part of the "cool kids".
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
Because 250k is NOT enough to dish out decent patches, its only enough to break even in the long term. (including development costs and such)
To have great patches and be actual competition for the monopoly that is WoW, Warhammer needs 500k subs. This is why I'm so interested in seeing how their doing, because if they don't get that then the game will never reach the level of quality I want of it.
I'm a very picky gamer and I don't spend money unless a game is great. Warhammer is only Ok with a potential for incredible right now, this is only my opinion.
Btw, those 250k and 500k numbers are from Mythic and EA themselves, not my own
I dont care at all about subs but when the subscription number is so low that updates stop coming in it sucks. The main reason for me though is that if there aren't enough people to play the game it isn't fun, it would suck not having updates but i will pay a monthly fee to play a game if it is already good.
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Real as Reality Television!!!
Okay well where does it say that you need 250k to support patches and continue updating? I don't see how you know Mythic and EA's budget so well , and how much it cost to make warhammer and run servers let alone how much it costs to run a MMORPG in general. Where are you getting your l337 information? Pretty much what you said was all void by the fact you substantiated no evidence.. lol
We know subscription numbers decides the quality of the game!!! (some people are idiots)
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Real as Reality Television!!!
I never said they would stop updating, I said they wouldn't make profit. No MMO would stop being supported unless they got below 50k subs and the operation cost was higher (or too close)
If you had been following this game more closely you'd have seen an interview with EA director a couple of weeks before launch that said it. They calculated that they needed roughly 250k subs, along with the initial sales to be able to break even with the game and its production cost. How long would they need that amount of people playing before they would start making profit? No idea
What is certain though is that if they only get 250k subs then the team working on the game will be much smaller than it is now
No, I will not dig through old articles, go to Warhammeralliance.com and find it yourself
Who cares if WOW has 11million subs, at most youll play with a possible 2500/10000.
250k subs is over 3.5 million a month.
Are you telling me a they can't release patches with 3.5 MILLION A MONTH? are you out of your mind?
Learn to read
Find me a 'full' server in War please.
I agree with alakram. Its about the "me too" attitude.
The server caps were raised and since that has happened I haven't seen a full server yet. The ones that I know were high pop are consistently medium now.
The ones that are usually claiming the game is dying are truly shallow, psychotic personalities.
Statement I hear; Well it didn’t have all of the features promised!
Answer: Why didn’t you wait until the reviews came out? Or wait until 2-3 months pass launch. It is because you are a selfish, spoiled brat who had to have it now. And you didn’t want others to pass you in your quest to be the highest on the server.
Another thing is that most people here don’t even play the game. They just do it because this is their only outlet for revenge because they couldn’t get laid.
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Continue fooling yourself and try to manipulate the community please. However, it does NOT work.
WoW has 2.5m NA, 2 m Europe subscribers. The rest are in Asia which pays about $5 per month.
I don't care how many subscribers a game has in Asia. There are several MMOs out there who has 10s of millions of players in Asia. I don't care, because I am not in Asia. I don't share anything with those players. They prefer mindless grinding, and WoW is also a grinding game so it's very normal that WoW has millions of players in Asia.
Have fun putting yourself into the same category, however I refuse to do so.
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Osbourne Cox: You are the guy from the gym.
Ted Treffon: I don't represent Hardbodies.
Osbourne Cox: I know very well what you represent. You represent the idiocy of today.
Ted Treffon: No, I don't represent that either.
Osbourne Cox: You are part of a league of morons. Oh, yes. You see you're one of the morons I've been fighting my whole life. But guess what. Today, I win.
Yes yes this game is dying already. It will be the shortest lived MMO ever.
/sarcasm off.
In all seriousness if you think this game is dying then go play another MMO (with the exception of WoW). WoW has set the bar high, and truth be told subscriber wise it isn't a realistic bar to reach. WoW is the anomally of the MMO world, not the norm. Please get over it.
Why are subs important? Various reasons, including:
1) to prove a point: fanbois will want to claim their game is the best and subs are a good way of pointing that out. Similarly, others with a negative agenda will want to show that the game is dying;
2) to evaluate whether the game is good: the lower the sub number, the higher the probability that the game just isn't very good. While this (or the converse) might not always be true, it may be hard to argue that a game with very few subscribers could be described as excellent;
3) it's fun to analyse these numbers: I remember going through the Vivendi reports released in 06 (or 07, can't remember which) to try and determine what the actual WoW subscription numbers were;
4) to determine whether the game is viable in the long term: if a game has few subscribers, it makes it harder for it to develop new content and/or continue in the future.
However, there's absolutely nothing wrong with just playing a game (I played A Tale in the Desert a long time back and that had very few players) and enjoying it.
It doesnt matter, unless the game has 20 people.
People feel vindicated... people are actually silly enough to think high sub numbers = good game
Truth is it means nothing, especially since these games are designed for the lowest common demoninator, not the higher elite hardcore players... so ofcourse they will have higher numbers.
Only thing that matters is what YOU think.
Example, Eve has a fraction of Wows sub numbers, yet Eve is 43039843 times the game Wow is