I agree with you here for the most part, but I do think that the MMO market will fluctuate between whatever MMO is the most popular at the time, I dont think WoW really has any specific formula that made it a one off, it was just a decent MMO at the right place and right time to catch everyones attention. As a matter of fact most of the WoW development that makes up the game today and it really caught on as a popular MMO came much after release.
This game will age pretty well, but I can definetely see another MMO being the move on for these people, most of the WoW playerbase werent MMO players when they started playing the game, but now they are, once WoW starts slowing down, and I can only see this happening a couple of years down the line, something being a blizzard product or not that offers a fun experience to lots of people and with the same level of polish will catch a lot of this player base, and it will become the new big thing.
For now in my opinion I think we are probably gonna see the same sort of steady "decline" that happened after UO/EQ back in the day, whereby investment will be fairly scarce for a few years with a few MMOs in the pipeline for a long time, and maybe then there will be an opportunity much like Blizzard had when they released WoW for another company to come along and take a real look at an empty market and try and make something that is gonna catch everyones attention.
The reason Wow became so huge was not just because it was a solid game but because it was the first MMO the mainstream gamer even heard of and therefor became the first MMO most people played.
Now people know of MMOs and no longer think Wow is a unique game like no other so no new game can take over that, at least not for PC.
That is the reason I think there wont be a huge game with small ones around, there is competition now and people actually know it.
Don't think they will be going free to play any time soon.
Now commence with the "90% are Chinese gold farmers" responses.
It's not 90% chinese gold farmers however Blizzards deal with China does put them in a unique situation where every Chinese account ever created is counted as active and can never go inactive. Last time someone tallied it the total Chinese accounts tallied around 5 million, and my guess is it has increased. Now don't get me wrong 10million is impressive, but when you take that into account there are other games that are similiar to WoW in numbers for specific areas of the world. Though possibly not overall.
Where do you see this? They have always been upfront about how they count Eastern "subs" like China. The account has to have been used in the previous 30 days for it to count as active. Now I agree, that is a very loose interpretation of what a sub is, but I seriously doubt that every Chinese account that has ever existed log in once a month, which is what you seem to be suggesting when you say every Chinese account ever created is counted as active.
i just don't believe that 10 million people are actively playing wow..it's bullshit..how many copies of the game have sold?
That's the thing, with the high turnover rate of players--those who once played and have left for good, those who are currently on an extended break--the number of players that once played wow but are not currently playing should almost certainly be 2, 3, or even 4 times the number of current players. This would indicate a total number of box sales between 30 and 50 million, which would rival the most selling games of all time like Super Mario Bros, and that just can't be close to factually true.
I wish there was a universal way to accurately and honestly gauge all MMO sub and sales numbers.
I agree with you here for the most part, but I do think that the MMO market will fluctuate between whatever MMO is the most popular at the time, I dont think WoW really has any specific formula that made it a one off, it was just a decent MMO at the right place and right time to catch everyones attention. As a matter of fact most of the WoW development that makes up the game today and it really caught on as a popular MMO came much after release.
This game will age pretty well, but I can definetely see another MMO being the move on for these people, most of the WoW playerbase werent MMO players when they started playing the game, but now they are, once WoW starts slowing down, and I can only see this happening a couple of years down the line, something being a blizzard product or not that offers a fun experience to lots of people and with the same level of polish will catch a lot of this player base, and it will become the new big thing.
For now in my opinion I think we are probably gonna see the same sort of steady "decline" that happened after UO/EQ back in the day, whereby investment will be fairly scarce for a few years with a few MMOs in the pipeline for a long time, and maybe then there will be an opportunity much like Blizzard had when they released WoW for another company to come along and take a real look at an empty market and try and make something that is gonna catch everyones attention.
The reason Wow became so huge was not just because it was a solid game but because it was the first MMO the mainstream gamer even heard of and therefor became the first MMO most people played.
Now people know of MMOs and no longer think Wow is a unique game like no other so no new game can take over that, at least not for PC.
That is the reason I think there wont be a huge game with small ones around, there is competition now and people actually know it.
Yep and that all factors in on what I said, right place, right time and a solid game, if the game was buggy and unplayable to some extent like some of the recent releases, it wouldnt have become such a big thing, it was low specs, quite polished ( from the features it had ), good marketing, combine that with the fact that the MMO market was pretty stagnant at the time and you have a recipe to make a lot of money.
Over the next few years I can see the decrease in investment in MMOs after the hype of "we can make a lot of cash like WoW", investors will realize MMOs are actually a bad investment outside of the circumstances above ( games in general are a pretty bad investment but its not the point of the conversation ), and that will cause the market again to become stagnant, at that point the same thing can happen.
I think your statement of "people no longer think WoW is unique" is a gross generalization and oversimplification as to why the phenomenom of WoW happened into simply "They dont know any better". Having played WoW pretty much solidly for 2/3 years and on and off until today I can tell you most people I have come into contact have actually played other MMOs before such as EQ, L2, LoTRO and even EVE... They never thought WoW was unique, actually most of the formula is present on previous MMOs, its the way they executed it, the polish and the whole social phenomenom really snowballed into success.
On the same note, I also know of entire guilds who tried to move to other more recent MMOs and went back to WoW because again it lacks the polish WoW has had from the very beginning. There is nothing wrong in trying to offer the same experience but to improve on it, make it more fun, every company however seems to be cherry picking a set of features they believe is what brings in the money and forgetting about the whole package.
i just don't believe that 10 million people are actively playing wow..it's bullshit..how many copies of the game have sold?
That's the thing, with the high turnover rate of players--those who once played and have left for good, those who are currently on an extended break--the number of players that once played wow but are not currently playing should almost certainly be 2, 3, or even 4 times the number of current players. This would indicate a total number of box sales between 30 and 50 million, which would rival the most selling games of all time like Super Mario Bros, and that just can't be close to factually true.
I wish there was a universal way to accurately and honestly gauge all MMO sub and sales numbers.
As far as I can tell, Blizzard is the most straightforward about how they calculate subs. They have stated numerous times exactly how they do it. Western accounts are counted as subs if they have paid for a monthly, or multi-month sub and are still in that window of what they paid for, and all first 30 day accounts that you get with the box price. The thing is, in the East, such as China, they count anyone who has logged in in the last 30 days. They do not buy the box which is why there haven't been 30-50 million boxes sold. Many eastern countries get the game for free and pay by the hour.
You say that you wish there was a universal way to accurately and honestly gauge MMO sub and sales numbers, it doesn't get much more so than how Blizzard does it. They tell you exactly up front how they are calculating what is considered a sub.
I just wanted to throw it out there that a couple of my friends are still subbed but rarely play it right now, so that pads the numbers of actual 'subscribers' also. Out of 10 million people, it's a guarantee that you'll get a lot of lazy people that just don't care about $15/month that might only login to see any updates or chat with others.
My server is really dead though, aside from the occasional chat conversations. Just a few months ago, it was packed with people.
I'll be curious how many copies of MoP are sold this time around. There's still a chance they will implement something pretty major (like how they are replacing talent trees) that gets a lot of positive word of mouth to earn a chunk of that 2+ million right back again if no other reason than to at least try it. I like that they are updating the old character models too, although I'm still not sold on MoP.
the best way to know how many people play wow see how many copies of MOP they sell
I agree. Last time I was on (US side) there were still a half dozen servers at full, and a bunch at heavy. I think the population is migrating on its own.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
the best way to know how many people play wow see how many copies of MOP they sell
I agree. Last time I was on (US side) there were still a half dozen servers at full, and a bunch at heavy. I think the population is migrating on its own.
no really, I met people who still playing vanilla, BC and WOTLK on 2011
As much as I think that WOW turned into a kids game, it still holds its own amoung the MMO's out there right now.
Now if they just created Vanilla servers I would sub right away.
If they gave Oceanic players servers not hosted in the US (Australian, New Zealand or Southern Asia hosted server instead) I would basically sub for life. But blizzard doesn't want my money and have ignored the Oceanic communties outcries for such a server for over 6 years.
Even Diablo 3, they created a Seperate Aus/NZ forum (Oceanic forum) and the whole first 4 pages is filled with people wanting a server not hosted in US.
Activision won't let them. They would rather buy swimming pools and cinemas for thier HQ, and spend money on how they can monitize you instead of thinking of making your customers happy.
I would play SWTOR because it in fact does have an Australian hosted server, but I don't like Origin/EA. All I hear is bad things about it.
i just don't believe that 10 million people are actively playing wow..it's bullshit..how many copies of the game have sold?
That's the thing, with the high turnover rate of players--those who once played and have left for good, those who are currently on an extended break--the number of players that once played wow but are not currently playing should almost certainly be 2, 3, or even 4 times the number of current players. This would indicate a total number of box sales between 30 and 50 million, which would rival the most selling games of all time like Super Mario Bros, and that just can't be close to factually true.
SMB should never be used in a best selling games list, it was included with many conoels which immediatley makes that number worthless, it would be like if blizzard included some crappy little game with all their wow boxes then claimed that game sold million of copies.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling" Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
As much as I think that WOW turned into a kids game, it still holds its own amoung the MMO's out there right now.
Now if they just created Vanilla servers I would sub right away.
If they gave Oceanic players servers not hosted in the US (Australian, New Zealand or Southern Asia hosted server instead) I would basically sub for life. But blizzard doesn't want my money and have ignored the Oceanic communties outcries for such a server for over 6 years.
Even Diablo 3, they created a Seperate Aus/NZ forum (Oceanic forum) and the whole first 4 pages is filled with people wanting a server not hosted in US.
Activision won't let them. They would rather buy swimming pools and cinemas for thier HQ, and spend money on how they can monitize you instead of thinking of making your customers happy.
I would play SWTOR because it in fact does have an Australian hosted server, but I don't like Origin/EA. All I hear is bad things about it.
You can probably "thank" the crappy Oceanic ISPs for the lack of real Aussie servers.
Originally posted by Cinatrot Originally posted by FearGXOriginally posted by snoop101As much as I think that WOW turned into a kids game, it still holds its own amoung the MMO's out there right now. Now if they just created Vanilla servers I would sub right away.
If they gave Oceanic players servers not hosted in the US (Australian, New Zealand or Southern Asia hosted server instead) I would basically sub for life. But blizzard doesn't want my money and have ignored the Oceanic communties outcries for such a server for over 6 years.Even Diablo 3, they created a Seperate Aus/NZ forum (Oceanic forum) and the whole first 4 pages is filled with people wanting a server not hosted in US.Activision won't let them. They would rather buy swimming pools and cinemas for thier HQ, and spend money on how they can monitize you instead of thinking of making your customers happy.I would play SWTOR because it in fact does have an Australian hosted server, but I don't like Origin/EA. All I hear is bad things about it.
You can probably "thank" the crappy Oceanic ISPs for the lack of real Aussie servers.
Yeah, there has to be a reason to not give people something they want to fork over money for. It could just be a really poor infrastructure, or it could be legal reasons. Hosting the servers in Australia would open Blizz up to some sort of legal liability or something. Blizzard doesn't strike me as a company unwilling to throw money at something. They rewrote D3 at least twice...that's got to cost a good chunk of money in programmer salaries. Why would they spend all that money to rewrite the game a couple times, and then not spend a little extra money to host servers in another country? The maintenance and upkeep of the servers is the least expensive part of the whole process.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
out of all my friends that played WoW, the last two have quit and are hoping to sell their accounts. So it's 10,199,998 now unless 2 new people started up. Unless someone can prove 2 new players, I won't buy into this whole 10.2 million thing.
You realise it could mean 10,299,999 subscribers don't you? So if your 2 friends left the game it would be 10,299,997, which is still 10.2.
Also, do you expect them to update it real time?
Get over yourself, you sound pathetic. At the time of Blizzard releasing those numbers they were true, get over it.
i just don't believe that 10 million people are actively playing wow..it's bullshit..how many copies of the game have sold?
Its probably accurate but then again......
Does anyone ever get the feeling that when mmos report their sub numbers these days its kind of like the guy in high school who claimed to have slept with 50 girls but instead had only ever slept with one. His cousin Francene.
wow isn't even in the top 5 selling games of all time...so how can they have 11 million subs as stated previously, that would make it the second biggest selling game of all time..they are saying subs after all.
It is actually in the top 5 PC franchises when you take in digital sales, which most people don't, so yeah.
i just don't believe that 10 million people are actively playing wow..it's bullshit..how many copies of the game have sold?
That's the thing, with the high turnover rate of players--those who once played and have left for good, those who are currently on an extended break--the number of players that once played wow but are not currently playing should almost certainly be 2, 3, or even 4 times the number of current players. This would indicate a total number of box sales between 30 and 50 million, which would rival the most selling games of all time like Super Mario Bros, and that just can't be close to factually true.
I wish there was a universal way to accurately and honestly gauge all MMO sub and sales numbers.
Eeeerrr.
You forgot they do not sell boxes in Asia, did you?
So of the current 10.2 million subscriptions, we know 3-4 millions are in the West, where they sell the boxes.
They sold 4.7 Millions Cataclysm boxes in the first month. Total sales are prolly more counting turn over (and still going as new players want to try WoW, if there are still some). This tells us at the time of Cata, wow had at least 4.7 million subscriptions in the West. This does not include the 2 million subs lost in the couple last quarters. Most of them were in Asia, they said, but let's say they lost 0.7 Millions and now they have 4 Millions subscription (but sold at least 4.7 million boxes)
So, WoW Vanilla, by now, has sold at least 4.7 millions. This is the ONLY sure number we have as Cata outsold all previous expansions and you need the basic game to play it. Many more though bought the game and stopped playing at some point in WoW history, how many is anybody's guess, but let's say there are 3 times more people that used to play WoW and do not anymore, that would make a 16 million boxes sold, that would place WoW quite near the best selling PC game of all times. Digital sales, however, are not counted in that, so we removed 2-4 millions in that and leave us with 12 millions box sold, better than SC 1, but much more reasonable than the 30-50 million boxes mentioned above.
Still, wouldn't you WANT to tell that you sold so many copies? I guess about MMO, you more like want to tell about your subscriptions and not the amount of box sold and that is what Blizzard does.
A shame cause I would really want to know
"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"
All I see is subscription licensing and other revenues @ 298m down from 388m in 2011 for the first quarter ..... Subscription, licensing and other revenues represents revenues from World of Warcraft subscriptions, Call of Duty Elite memberships, licensing royalties from our products and franchises, value-added services, downloadable content, and other miscellaneous revenues.Sorry folks just subtracting the call of Duty Elite memberships @ 2 million just doesn't leave enough money to come anywhere close to 10.2 million playing subs which they state is 2 .
All I see is subscription licensing and other revenues @ 298m down from 388m in 2011 for the first quarter ..... Subscription, licensing and other revenues represents revenues from World of Warcraft subscriptions, Call of Duty Elite memberships, licensing royalties from our products and franchises, value-added services, downloadable content, and other miscellaneous revenues.Sorry folks just subtracting the call of Duty Elite memberships @ 2 million just doesn't leave enough money to come anywhere close to 10.2 million playing subs which they state is 2 .
Blizzard plays games by counting Asian players as subs. Asians pay by the hour and are considered a subber if they only played one hour.
Originally posted by FrodoFragins Originally posted by Baddogbill All I see is subscription licensing and other revenues @ 298m down from 388m in 2011 for the first quarter ..... Subscription, licensing and other revenues represents revenues from World of Warcraft subscriptions, Call of Duty Elite memberships, licensing royalties from our products and franchises, value-added services, downloadable content, and other miscellaneous revenues.Sorry folks just subtracting the call of Duty Elite memberships @ 2 million just doesn't leave enough money to come anywhere close to 10.2 million playing subs which they state is 2 .
Blizzard plays games by counting Asian players as subs. Asians pay by the hour and are considered a subber if they only played one hour. If you pay the $15 and subscribe to WoW for a month and only play 1 hour then you are also counted as a subscriber by Blizzard.
The only difference is that you payed a lot more for that 1 hour of game time.
Also, not all Asians pay by the hour. Asia consists of more than just China. Look at a map for the love of God.
I can barely picture 6-7 million people wanting to sit down and grind through endless amounts of boring content. Wish this game would either 1. Die out or 2. Get fun again, but knowing blizzard probably neither will happen.
Comments
The reason Wow became so huge was not just because it was a solid game but because it was the first MMO the mainstream gamer even heard of and therefor became the first MMO most people played.
Now people know of MMOs and no longer think Wow is a unique game like no other so no new game can take over that, at least not for PC.
That is the reason I think there wont be a huge game with small ones around, there is competition now and people actually know it.
Where do you see this? They have always been upfront about how they count Eastern "subs" like China. The account has to have been used in the previous 30 days for it to count as active. Now I agree, that is a very loose interpretation of what a sub is, but I seriously doubt that every Chinese account that has ever existed log in once a month, which is what you seem to be suggesting when you say every Chinese account ever created is counted as active.
That's the thing, with the high turnover rate of players--those who once played and have left for good, those who are currently on an extended break--the number of players that once played wow but are not currently playing should almost certainly be 2, 3, or even 4 times the number of current players. This would indicate a total number of box sales between 30 and 50 million, which would rival the most selling games of all time like Super Mario Bros, and that just can't be close to factually true.
I wish there was a universal way to accurately and honestly gauge all MMO sub and sales numbers.
Yep and that all factors in on what I said, right place, right time and a solid game, if the game was buggy and unplayable to some extent like some of the recent releases, it wouldnt have become such a big thing, it was low specs, quite polished ( from the features it had ), good marketing, combine that with the fact that the MMO market was pretty stagnant at the time and you have a recipe to make a lot of money.
Over the next few years I can see the decrease in investment in MMOs after the hype of "we can make a lot of cash like WoW", investors will realize MMOs are actually a bad investment outside of the circumstances above ( games in general are a pretty bad investment but its not the point of the conversation ), and that will cause the market again to become stagnant, at that point the same thing can happen.
I think your statement of "people no longer think WoW is unique" is a gross generalization and oversimplification as to why the phenomenom of WoW happened into simply "They dont know any better". Having played WoW pretty much solidly for 2/3 years and on and off until today I can tell you most people I have come into contact have actually played other MMOs before such as EQ, L2, LoTRO and even EVE... They never thought WoW was unique, actually most of the formula is present on previous MMOs, its the way they executed it, the polish and the whole social phenomenom really snowballed into success.
On the same note, I also know of entire guilds who tried to move to other more recent MMOs and went back to WoW because again it lacks the polish WoW has had from the very beginning. There is nothing wrong in trying to offer the same experience but to improve on it, make it more fun, every company however seems to be cherry picking a set of features they believe is what brings in the money and forgetting about the whole package.
Again my 2 cents
As far as I can tell, Blizzard is the most straightforward about how they calculate subs. They have stated numerous times exactly how they do it. Western accounts are counted as subs if they have paid for a monthly, or multi-month sub and are still in that window of what they paid for, and all first 30 day accounts that you get with the box price. The thing is, in the East, such as China, they count anyone who has logged in in the last 30 days. They do not buy the box which is why there haven't been 30-50 million boxes sold. Many eastern countries get the game for free and pay by the hour.
You say that you wish there was a universal way to accurately and honestly gauge MMO sub and sales numbers, it doesn't get much more so than how Blizzard does it. They tell you exactly up front how they are calculating what is considered a sub.
I just wanted to throw it out there that a couple of my friends are still subbed but rarely play it right now, so that pads the numbers of actual 'subscribers' also. Out of 10 million people, it's a guarantee that you'll get a lot of lazy people that just don't care about $15/month that might only login to see any updates or chat with others.
My server is really dead though, aside from the occasional chat conversations. Just a few months ago, it was packed with people.
I'll be curious how many copies of MoP are sold this time around. There's still a chance they will implement something pretty major (like how they are replacing talent trees) that gets a lot of positive word of mouth to earn a chunk of that 2+ million right back again if no other reason than to at least try it. I like that they are updating the old character models too, although I'm still not sold on MoP.
At any given moment my "medium" population server fluctuates between that and "new players" - from 30-70 online each faction 1-85.
Peak is around 200 combined.
the best way to know how many people play wow see how many copies of MOP they sell
if its 10 million then thats how many players they have
i think it will be more like 3 million but they may shock you
I agree. Last time I was on (US side) there were still a half dozen servers at full, and a bunch at heavy. I think the population is migrating on its own.
no really, I met people who still playing vanilla, BC and WOTLK on 2011
while true,
Cata was the first WOW expansion to be available for a full month prior to launch direct from Blizzard
thats the real reason it got as high as 3.3 (which is still a great number regardless)
I personally believe there were high expectations for Cataclysm
time will tell what happens with the Panda expansion but I dont think it will sell as well as Cata
(due to a mixture of disappointment with Cata and many are not enthused about Panda)
EQ2 fan sites
If they gave Oceanic players servers not hosted in the US (Australian, New Zealand or Southern Asia hosted server instead) I would basically sub for life. But blizzard doesn't want my money and have ignored the Oceanic communties outcries for such a server for over 6 years.
Even Diablo 3, they created a Seperate Aus/NZ forum (Oceanic forum) and the whole first 4 pages is filled with people wanting a server not hosted in US.
Activision won't let them. They would rather buy swimming pools and cinemas for thier HQ, and spend money on how they can monitize you instead of thinking of making your customers happy.
I would play SWTOR because it in fact does have an Australian hosted server, but I don't like Origin/EA. All I hear is bad things about it.
SMB should never be used in a best selling games list, it was included with many conoels which immediatley makes that number worthless, it would be like if blizzard included some crappy little game with all their wow boxes then claimed that game sold million of copies.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
You can probably "thank" the crappy Oceanic ISPs for the lack of real Aussie servers.
You can probably "thank" the crappy Oceanic ISPs for the lack of real Aussie servers.
Yeah, there has to be a reason to not give people something they want to fork over money for. It could just be a really poor infrastructure, or it could be legal reasons. Hosting the servers in Australia would open Blizz up to some sort of legal liability or something. Blizzard doesn't strike me as a company unwilling to throw money at something. They rewrote D3 at least twice...that's got to cost a good chunk of money in programmer salaries. Why would they spend all that money to rewrite the game a couple times, and then not spend a little extra money to host servers in another country? The maintenance and upkeep of the servers is the least expensive part of the whole process.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
You realise it could mean 10,299,999 subscribers don't you? So if your 2 friends left the game it would be 10,299,997, which is still 10.2.
Also, do you expect them to update it real time?
Get over yourself, you sound pathetic. At the time of Blizzard releasing those numbers they were true, get over it.
I'd say 40-80 million copies of WoW (including expansions) have sold over it's lifetime (including digital sales.)
It is actually in the top 5 PC franchises when you take in digital sales, which most people don't, so yeah.
Eeeerrr.
You forgot they do not sell boxes in Asia, did you?
So of the current 10.2 million subscriptions, we know 3-4 millions are in the West, where they sell the boxes.
They sold 4.7 Millions Cataclysm boxes in the first month. Total sales are prolly more counting turn over (and still going as new players want to try WoW, if there are still some). This tells us at the time of Cata, wow had at least 4.7 million subscriptions in the West. This does not include the 2 million subs lost in the couple last quarters. Most of them were in Asia, they said, but let's say they lost 0.7 Millions and now they have 4 Millions subscription (but sold at least 4.7 million boxes)
So, WoW Vanilla, by now, has sold at least 4.7 millions. This is the ONLY sure number we have as Cata outsold all previous expansions and you need the basic game to play it. Many more though bought the game and stopped playing at some point in WoW history, how many is anybody's guess, but let's say there are 3 times more people that used to play WoW and do not anymore, that would make a 16 million boxes sold, that would place WoW quite near the best selling PC game of all times. Digital sales, however, are not counted in that, so we removed 2-4 millions in that and leave us with 12 millions box sold, better than SC 1, but much more reasonable than the 30-50 million boxes mentioned above.
Still, wouldn't you WANT to tell that you sold so many copies? I guess about MMO, you more like want to tell about your subscriptions and not the amount of box sold and that is what Blizzard does.
A shame cause I would really want to know
"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"
All I see is subscription licensing and other revenues @ 298m down from 388m in 2011 for the first quarter ..... Subscription, licensing and other revenues represents revenues from World of Warcraft subscriptions, Call of Duty Elite memberships, licensing royalties from our products and franchises, value-added services, downloadable content, and other miscellaneous revenues.Sorry folks just subtracting the call of Duty Elite memberships @ 2 million just doesn't leave enough money to come anywhere close to 10.2 million playing subs which they state is 2 .
I think any gaming company would sell their souls to the devil to have 25% of the number of subs, let alone box sales WoW has/had.
Blizzard plays games by counting Asian players as subs. Asians pay by the hour and are considered a subber if they only played one hour.
If you pay the $15 and subscribe to WoW for a month and only play 1 hour then you are also counted as a subscriber by Blizzard.
The only difference is that you payed a lot more for that 1 hour of game time.
Also, not all Asians pay by the hour. Asia consists of more than just China. Look at a map for the love of God.
So much for the "pure subscription model dying" arguement.
Good for Blizzard.
I can barely picture 6-7 million people wanting to sit down and grind through endless amounts of boring content. Wish this game would either 1. Die out or 2. Get fun again, but knowing blizzard probably neither will happen.
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