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there does nt seam to be an influx of new players with the lich king
googajoob7
Member Posts: 866
i play on wow oh 3 european servers and although i m enjoying the lich king a lot . i m noticing there does nt appear to be the same influx of new blood that happened around the release of the burning crusade . i think perhaps its because theres only the death knight which starts at 55 and no new races for people to start from level one perhaps . also maybe we ll see a lot of new players around christmas . i m wondering if anyone else has noticed this ?
Comments
The high level zones are very busy. In TBC my server hovered around the low/medium pop border. Now everywhere seems full of players and I seriously lag in Dalaran.
But I'd imagine the low level zones are ghost towns at the moment. Everyone has stopped playing alts in order to level mains and DKs. So even if new players arrived they are unlikely to make up for the alts that have left.
I suspect populations have gone up, but these are mainly returning players not new players. The new players, will, as always, arrive with Christmas.
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From personal experience i noticed a rise in new players in the couple of months running up to the expansion and especially in after the official announcement of the release date.
I have noticed that the high and low level zones are pretty busy overall, but the mid-level (30-50) seem very quiet at the moment, but as i say that is just from personal experience on Aggramar and Emerald dream EU servers.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
My son plays, and his server in the US, Kel Thuzad had 1000 person queues in the first few nights after the release, and I heard Blizzard opened 20 new servers.
Sounds like a decent influx to me so far.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
WOW battlechest (original wow) also continues to be in the top 20 of pc game sales which indicates a steady stream of new players.
This is because wotlk is not living up to all the hype...Ive said this before and ill say it again, ive been in Best Buy, Wal Mart, Gamestop, and a few other lesser known for selling pc software stores and I have seen boxes upon boxes of this expansion sitting on tables and end shelves collecting dust...In fact at Best Buy this week I noticed an employee boxing back up some copies of wotlk, now that could mean 1 or 2 things...they are making shelve space for other games or they are moving merchandise off the floor that isn't selling...wotlk brought nothing new to the table cept a new class and some refurbished NPC's, Quests and graphics..Many of my friends that have played it just for the PvP and sieging stated that it was the worse thing they have ever experienced, but they like a few others won't leave so quickly because of time invested....
There are people already level 80 a week or so into release already...What does that tell you? easy, no challenge and now they get to sit around another 3 years..Now you would think with all the money blizzard makes off software and merchandise that in 3 years of developement that there would be more of a challenge...Reminds me of the EQ days....Bring out expansions every now and then to keep people happy while you pour money into other games...
IMO WOW has reached its peak and sometime in 2009 when other MMO's start appearing and other MMO's improve, people will eventually stop subscribing, not everyone, but that fabricated 12 mil number will go on a decline..Its evident in most of the Forums on this and other sites that people are disappointed and are losing intrest..
I know some people think that numbers will improve during Xmas, I would say don't hold your breath
For the most part, the expansion wasn't designed to attract new players, but catter to old players. Its only natural that low level zones wouldn't see a large amount of new players. Also, queue times may of turned off new players for some time.
This is because wotlk is not living up to all the hype...Ive said this before and ill say it again, ive been in Best Buy, Wal Mart, Gamestop, and a few other lesser known for selling pc software stores and I have seen boxes upon boxes of this expansion sitting on tables and end shelves collecting dust...In fact at Best Buy this week I noticed an employee boxing back up some copies of wotlk, now that could mean 1 or 2 things...they are making shelve space for other games or they are moving merchandise off the floor that isn't selling...wotlk brought nothing new to the table cept a new class and some refurbished NPC's, Quests and graphics..Many of my friends that have played it just for the PvP and sieging stated that it was the worse thing they have ever experienced, but they like a few others won't leave so quickly because of time invested....
There are people already level 80 a week or so into release already...What does that tell you? easy, no challenge and now they get to sit around another 3 years..Now you would think with all the money blizzard makes off software and merchandise that in 3 years of developement that there would be more of a challenge...Reminds me of the EQ days....Bring out expansions every now and then to keep people happy while you pour money into other games...
IMO WOW has reached its peak and sometime in 2009 when other MMO's start appearing and other MMO's improve, people will eventually stop subscribing, not everyone, but that fabricated 12 mil number will go on a decline..Its evident in most of the Forums on this and other sites that people are disappointed and are losing intrest..
I know some people think that numbers will improve during Xmas, I would say don't hold your breath
Numbers improving? Wrath sold 2.8M copies in the FIRST DAY and is still the #1 PC game on any chart. People keep saying how 'bored' wow players will be.. but the fact is there were 2.8M people who were so bored with WOW that they couldn't wait to get more of that boring game. The same thing could have been said back when BC was released "omg. it's boring, just more of the same"... yet througout the life of BC, WOW kept breaking new subscriber records. People have been saying that WOW would peak for the past 3 years, and it still hasn't stopped growing.
I honestly don't know what game you are thinking about in 2009 that is going to hurt WOW (please give an example). WOW actually GREW in subscribers during the launch of AOC and Warhammer.. there are no games coming out in 2009 with any where near the marketing budgets as those two games.
Oh, and if you think Warhammer or AOC is going to be reborn and compete. Take a look here at who is #1 (wrath) and who is not even in the top 100 (warhammer and AOC). Even the original WOW is #17 this week, which means a ton more new players are joining WOW then are joining aoc or warhammer
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/videogames/229575/ref=pd_ts_vg_nav
Your exact post is exactly what someone could have said when BC was launched, yet the game has grown by nearly 4M people since then.
Woody, making the same post over and over again won't make it any more true you know!
1 - Although it was voted the second most popular place to buy games at some point, Best Buy is hardly the best marker for sales at the moment as it has already had to slash it's forcast earnings for 2009 due to poor sales across the board. Maybe they ordered far too many copies, maybe they were creating diplsy space for chistmas, maybe they were taking apart the promotions from the launch week, show me something solid that says that sales have not been what they should have instead of saying "i saw boxes???"
2 - How much of an increase has there been in online sales compared to over the counter sales in the last couple of years. I ordered three copies for me and other people, all online.
3 - Show me a sales chart anywhere that doesn't have a WOW game in it somewhere?
4 - 400,000 copies more sold of this expansion than the last in the first 24 hours, hardly the mark of a failure since most other MMO's struggle to sell that amount alone!
I have no problem with people that don't like WOW, each to their own at the end of the day, but it does amuse me to see how much time people will dedicate to putting down a game they don't like, hehe.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
This is because wotlk is not living up to all the hype...Ive said this before and ill say it again, ive been in Best Buy, Wal Mart, Gamestop, and a few other lesser known for selling pc software stores and I have seen boxes upon boxes of this expansion sitting on tables and end shelves collecting dust...In fact at Best Buy this week I noticed an employee boxing back up some copies of wotlk, now that could mean 1 or 2 things...they are making shelve space for other games or they are moving merchandise off the floor that isn't selling...wotlk brought nothing new to the table cept a new class and some refurbished NPC's, Quests and graphics..Many of my friends that have played it just for the PvP and sieging stated that it was the worse thing they have ever experienced, but they like a few others won't leave so quickly because of time invested....
There are people already level 80 a week or so into release already...What does that tell you? easy, no challenge and now they get to sit around another 3 years..Now you would think with all the money blizzard makes off software and merchandise that in 3 years of developement that there would be more of a challenge...Reminds me of the EQ days....Bring out expansions every now and then to keep people happy while you pour money into other games...
IMO WOW has reached its peak and sometime in 2009 when other MMO's start appearing and other MMO's improve, people will eventually stop subscribing, not everyone, but that fabricated 12 mil number will go on a decline..Its evident in most of the Forums on this and other sites that people are disappointed and are losing intrest..
I know some people think that numbers will improve during Xmas, I would say don't hold your breath
Numbers improving? Wrath sold 2.8M copies in the FIRST DAY and is still the #1 PC game on any chart. People keep saying how 'bored' wow players will be.. but the fact is there were 2.8M people who were so bored with WOW that they couldn't wait to get more of that boring game. The same thing could have been said back when BC was released "omg. it's boring, just more of the same"... yet througout the life of BC, WOW kept breaking new subscriber records. People have been saying that WOW would peak for the past 3 years, and it still hasn't stopped growing.
I honestly don't know what game you are thinking about in 2009 that is going to hurt WOW (please give an example). WOW actually GREW in subscribers during the launch of AOC and Warhammer.. there are no games coming out in 2009 with any where near the marketing budgets as those two games.
Oh, and if you think Warhammer or AOC is going to be reborn and compete. Take a look here at who is #1 (wrath) and who is not even in the top 100 (warhammer and AOC). Even the original WOW is #17 this week, which means a ton more new players are joining WOW then are joining aoc or warhammer
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/videogames/229575/ref=pd_ts_vg_nav
Your exact post is exactly what someone could have said when BC was launched, yet the game has grown by nearly 4M people since then.
QFT, woody1974 is smoking something
My account was banned for "Allowing others to access your account" after being hacked, and all my gear stolen off my charactor. I logged on a week after getting High War Lord befor TBC, and my guy was stripped naked, I opened a ticket, and my account was banned. It was awful. I vowed never to return to WoW, but often wanted to. I just never did it because Everyone had years of work ahead of me, and it would take a long time for me to catch up. I didn't feel like spending a year trying to catch up.
That's odd, my friend had his account hacked, and all the items on his main were sharded and stolen. Took blizzard about ten days to resolve it - the only thing they didn't roll back was his enchanting skill, he still had rank 1 enchanting (this was when rank 1 could shard any item). All his equipment and gold was restored.
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
-Thomas Jefferson
Firstly you don't spend a year catching up in WoW, the gap isn't that huge anymore.
Secondly your account being banned for what you say is perfectly normal. You have to report it as being hacked (and out of your control) at which an investigation starts to ascertain true ownership and *after* you get the account returned to you after sending them the needed info do you ask your stuff back etc.
Any chance your ticket only involved asking back the stuff you lost? Because then you missed vital information for them.
well its rather easy to catch up just hit the cap and find a casual raiding guild and get gear.
Just to set the record straight..
2.8 million box sells to stores..
Woody is somewhat accurate, I go to local stores and their is a crapload of WoW expansions and I am still surprised to see stores even have multiple Collector Editions hanging about as well.
TBC I believe was more successful than WotLK release and honestly, Blizz should start creating more Expansions instead of giving its loyal base only -- 2 -- Expansions since its release in Nov 2004. That is just awful.
At least -1- Major expansion a year to keep the game healthy and new would be just great for its fanbase.
What the hell does "2.8 Million box sells to stores..." mean???
Now children lets all have a small lesson in retail shall we? Now if you know that an item is going to be popular and sell massively, should you;
A - Have plenty of stock in store so if customers turn up to buy it you can sell them a copy
or
B - Only order a minimum quantity and turn customers away?
You decide.
Now, a small question of mathamatics? Which is the larger number, 2.4 Million or 2.8 Million, answers on a postcard please.
Finally, it isn't like Blizzard release and expansion and then do nothing else at all in between, there is plenty of content release in between the expansions to keep the game 'fresh'. Purely from a personal perspective anyway, i would much rather have a polished, well put together expansion every couple of years than a piece of crap that needs patching for months afterwards every year.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
i did say new players . theres certainly an influx of returning players which would account for the waiting times we see on some servers . the starting zones for new characters arnt empty but they certainly arnt busy either on a lot of servers ( not in the way they were with tbc anyway) . what i think is warcraft peaked with the burning crusade in terms of attacting an influx of new blood . warcraft is still very healthy of course and will continue to be so for years to come . i ve no problems with the lich king myself its a far better expansion than the burning crusade in my opinion .
of course christmas is just around the corner and we may see a large number of new player then .
As someone said, even the WoW battlechest is still always in the top 10 since years now, there's new blood every day, once the basic boxes start leaving the top list is when the game will really start a decline.
i ve played wow for 3 and a half years on and off . i ve known proberbly 100s of players in that time and i can only say i ve know 3 cases of accounts being stolen and non of an account being banned . i ve known a few people who ve been banned for a day maybe two for doing something stupid like hassling a gm or spamming too much . as for accounts being stolen its normally down to someone implimenting an add on from a dogdy sourse . i did get someone banned once through reporting a racist outburst in the battle grounds . lets just say this guy had something against jewish people and then went on to make some rather unsavoury comments about the holocaust for some reason . i told him i d report him and he later came back under a new account and gave me some lip because he d lost his old one . :P of course i reported him again .
all i can say is in my experiance blizzard dont to it on a whim . its normally for something .
Back when my account got hacked, i reported it to get my stuff back (They sold all my on my alts who weren't in any way twinked with the best of gear for their level, but barely touched my 60. he still had whatever was in his bank, luckily it was a couple pieces of backup gear I had saved up, but by no means on par with what i had) and blizzard banned my account to put it under review unti I could send them my information. They didn't ban it just for jollies, they did it so the hacker couldn't get control of my account again.
Admittedly, yeah i probably downloaded something that logged my keys, or something similar, but what I found hallarious was that the person who hacked my account went and bought a timecard just to reactivate the account to hack it, because my account had expired about a month before and i had no interest in renewing at the time with TBC around the corner.
How i found out my account was hacked if it was inactive? One of my good friends in my guild emailed me and asked me why I was being so rude to everybody and selling my gear. I try to log in, boom, nothing. i file for lost password, get in and thats when I found all my toons naked.
Back when my account got hacked, i reported it to get my stuff back (They sold all my on my alts who weren't in any way twinked with the best of gear for their level, but barely touched my 60. he still had whatever was in his bank, luckily it was a couple pieces of backup gear I had saved up, but by no means on par with what i had) and blizzard banned my account to put it under review unti I could send them my information. They didn't ban it just for jollies, they did it so the hacker couldn't get control of my account again.
Admittedly, yeah i probably downloaded something that logged my keys, or something similar, but what I found hallarious was that the person who hacked my account went and bought a timecard just to reactivate the account to hack it, because my account had expired about a month before and i had no interest in renewing at the time with TBC around the corner.
How i found out my account was hacked if it was inactive? One of my good friends in my guild emailed me and asked me why I was being so rude to everybody and selling my gear. I try to log in, boom, nothing. i file for lost password, get in and thats when I found all my toons naked.
Same thing happened to me a couple of months back.
I hadn't logged into my account in about 2 weeks and I get an email saying my password was reset. Then 10 minutes later I get another email saying my account has been put on a 72 hour ban for behavior. So I get home and try to reset my password a few times and it works but I'm still banned. I wait a few days and try to get back in and my 70 rogue is dead inside shadow labs. My toolbar has been re-arranged and instead of having max herbalism/alchemy. I now have herbalism/mining. He still had all my equipment on and I had a new trinket.
I log in with my other characters to find I have some emails. I had a few pages of auctions sells and by the time I cleared my inbox my character had over 1000 gold. None of my characters were nude and cleaned out and a few of them had a few hundred gold on them. I guess I got lucky and intercepted the hacker before he cleaned me out. My friend IRL was telling me he saw my 70 rogue in AV every night for the past few days but I wouldn't respond to him. He tried talking to one of my other characters and the hacker just kept asking him for gold and finally logged out when my friend told him to call his cell phone.
With a game this big and popular they really have to step up the security measures and make sure accounts don't get hacked.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
A game can not grow more than there are potential players.
It might just be that Wow hooked most players who is intrested in the game already and now are filling in the spaces for people who is quiting just. It must happen sooner or later to any game, it is nothing to worry about.
I would believe that the game have grown a litle bit with WOTLK but not nearly as much as when TBC came, and that is because anyone with a computer knows what wow is by now. If they want many more players they will have to open new markets and translate the game to new languages.
Logic says that anything will reach a peak sooner or later whatever it is, Wow just might have reached it or at least is getting close to it now, it is just natural. But don't worry, the game got a few more good years still.
dude, they cannot do a thing beside what they are already doing if you download a keylogger and an hacker get your password and login.
It is not like the hackers are entering the Blizzard's servers and getting the info from there, they are getting the info from your computer or on the net in general.
So it is the USERS security that has to improve. Stopping downloading illegal software, movies, music and the like would be one great first step as that stuff is mostly what it says it is but you cannot know if there are any surprises attached to the new brand stolen album. (note, I am not implying you do that, but I know it is awfully popular to do so right now)
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
Usually the surprises comes from runable files and zipped archives. .mp3 files and video files are usually ok.
And everyone should have a good firewall + Antivirus and scan the computer for stuff at least once a week even if youre not downloading anything weird.
Even just visiting a webb page can get you a virus so be careful and check your computer often.
It is possible that hackers could actually hack a Wow server (They did it with Hotmail) but it is far easier for them to hack you. I don't know of any example where a hacker actually have stolen accounts from a MMO company so it is at least very rare.
If someone hijacked your account. the problem is usually at your end, and be careful because they can steal a lot worse things from you than a game account like your Visa card...
WOTLK only offers new content to the hardcore, veteran crowd. When an exansion doesn't offer anything for new players, what would make them suddenly subscribe to WoW when they never have before.
i think this is the crux of the matter . at the beginning of the lich king there was a huge number of returning players and servers that were medium hit high or full for a few weeks now i m noticing some of those same medium servers showing low populations. maybe christmas will revivie its fortunes a bit . if not wow may have passed its peak .it was of course inevitable and i m sure it will be around and popular for years to come .