While i agree with the loyal fanbase of WoW, i was a fan for almost 8 years of WoW before pulling the plug out.
Some facts people are overlooking this time is the following.
1. Death servers, they are many, WoW Eu has 125 servers, 12 are full - 20 are medium - 90 are empty / low
Blizzard let those servers rot to death and doesnt intervene on those death servers, wich creates a domino effect.
Who wants to play I AM LEGEND ?
2. Broken promises
They promised faster contend updates in Cataclysm,.......8 months have passed since the last raid instance named Dragon Soul....
People payed 12.99 euro a month in that period without getting any decent updates for their money.
3. MoP
There are many fans who love Panda's, but their are also many that dislike the cute little bears.
For many it seems WoW is targeting a very young audiance, Pet battles (pokemon style) and Pandabears (kung fu panda) are proof of those actions.
A very large amount of people hate those decisions, and are in a twilight zone.
4.- 1.1 million players unsubbed in Q2
No suprise, but who expected that before the summer vacation even started ?
Q3 will hold numbers of the summer, GW2 release and Annual Pass members who runs out their 1 year subscription.
MoP might bring a chunk of those players back, but by no means all those players are returning.
5. Guildwars 2
While it has no sub, it has a very high attraction factot for bored players.
GW2 is comming at the right moment for all those players who are bored to death with ther 8 year old WoW who seems to have lost their touch with their loyal playerbase.
Me included, i wont be looking back to WoW after playing 1 GW2 beta.
The king of the Hill is showing cracks and the foundation of WoW in crumbling, the rippel effect of death servers and friend lists getting empty is showing effect.
2 bad expansions in a row is for many the final straw.
Toss in GW2 who gets nothing but love and good karma and you might see a BIG shift incomming this year.
What people do seem to overlook when looking at WoW subs numbers is 9.1 million sub isnt realy true.
I bet 5 to 6 million are pay per hour asian players, who pay a few cent per hour.
EU might even have dipped below 1.5 million subs when you look at all those death servers.
We should see some real numbers in Q3 and Q4 tough, i bet they wont look good for Blizzard
Originally posted by Illyssia I think GW2 launch is going to crucify the Panda expansion and force that company to a free-to-play model.
I wouldnt go that far but I do forsee WoW losing half its US and EU subscription base by the end of the year.
im a gw2 fan but i strongly disagree
Blizzard is a recognized name brand thats been around for 20 years
if theres any impact, it will be minor
I expect GW2 to grow over time, bringing in NEW players, to the mmo gaming space
players that never liked wow or subscribing to mmos
Market analysis predicts 3.2 million GW2 players by years end. It would be rather silly to fathom that none of those will come from WoW, esp considering every website and MMO forum site is discussing the impending release. WoW might see a slight increase, but within a few months it will begin to lose subs again just like it 's done since LK.
It was one analyst and he predicted 3.2 million copies sold, not necessarily 3.2 million players. Over the course of the years GW1 and its expansions have sold over 7 million copies, but that doesn't mean there are over 7 million players.
Don't get me wrong, I already cancelled my wow sub and have pre-purchased GW2 (played in all bwe's and stress tests) and can't wait to play the game, but we should be conservative in our expectations regarding GW2; no need to hype things ourselves.
So wow costs nearly 500 million a year to run.. So will gw2 cost a similar amount to run? if thats the case they are gonna need to sell mroe copies.. or wait the cash shop thats where GW2 will make money.. Cash shop = sub. Most players will probally end up spending a similar amount in the cash shop as they would by paying a sub.. maybe more..
Also nothing is going to kill wow and its about time devs realised they need to stop aiming to kill wow off.. Not saying this is what the GW2 devs are trying to do but its waht the guy writing the article is trying to say..
Its not gonna happen..people love wow and will continue to love wow until blizzard decide its time to end it by releasing their next MMORPG..
Originally posted by TJixlee it will effect WoW but now like it will SWTOR RIFT TERA TSW and others. WoW could lose half its player base and still be profitable. no ones going to beatthat titan of a game...... UNLESS blizz makes WoW2 or something lol
Don't think it will affect TSW much at all, If it does it will be positive.
TSW is the anti-WoW/Swtor/Rift/Gw2.
Actually TSW has more in common with Swtor and Rift (WoW clones) then GW2 does ...quest hubs, progressive dungeons and after thought pvp is the calling card for WoW clones
dear fanboy, and gw2 is diffrent? you run "dynamic quests" mostly story quests and normal quests, 8 doungens to run trough and a few pvp did I forget something? A MMo is a MMo wheres nothing to change on that sorry.
I've played TSW in beta and for a month after release.
I played GW2 beta week end events.
TSW is more similar to SW:TOR ( a better SW:TOR if I may say so) in quest structures and has a unique skill system. GW2 is similar..... to nothing I ever played before.
So yea, GW2 IS different.
Will this means it will not suffer the fate of most other MMOs released since WoW? I hope so, but I surely do not know. It FEELs that way to me. I bought the original GW1 but none of the expansions. I am here ready to buy GW2 and all and every single expansion they will make, if the game continues to be what I saw in BWE3.
"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"
so much bitterness. so you fail at wow? take it easy, move on, go outside, dont get all angry and web warriory. im sure youll enjoy hello kitty island of whatever other f2p game you plumb for.
all these kinds of threads do is set up a new game to fail. just watch this space.
When NCSoft acquired Arena Net, Guild Wars’ developer, Garriott and his team discerned an audience not being served by the traditional subscription-based MMO. (“There’s a large number of people who don’t want to pay 15 dollars a month”, as he puts it.) Guild Wars was designed from the ground up to capture that niche, with community and help tools that minimized the need for frequent customer service– a key money sink for MMOs. By Garriott’s estimate, Guild Wars incurs 80% less support costs than NCsoft’s more traditional MMOs, like their Lineage series. There are no Game Masters in Guild Wars, wandering around the world settling disputes and helping players—and charging NCsoft by the hour.
The other cost-saving feature comes from economy of bandwidth. MMO players know all about long download times, when a game has an update, with patches that often exceed 100 megabytes, and thousands of players simultaneously piling on, to get it. (“It can cost us a million dollars for an update patch,” Garriott says of other NCSoft MMOs. “You peak when you release a giant download.”) By contrast, Guild Wars streams its updates in small chunks, depending on what part of the world you’re in. “Instead of having peaks of bandwidth usage… [the update] streams it evenly over time, so the costs don’t peak.”
So wow costs nearly 500 million a year to run.. So will gw2 cost a similar amount to run? if thats the case they are gonna need to sell mroe copies.. or wait the cash shop thats where GW2 will make money.. Cash shop = sub. Most players will probally end up spending a similar amount in the cash shop as they would by paying a sub.. maybe more..
Also nothing is going to kill wow and its about time devs realised they need to stop aiming to kill wow off.. Not saying this is what the GW2 devs are trying to do but its waht the guy writing the article is trying to say..
Its not gonna happen..people love wow and will continue to love wow until blizzard decide its time to end it by releasing their next MMORPG..
Caldrin...
So... if GW2's cash shop equals monthly subs, does that mean that I play wow and opt out from paying monthly subs? In GW2 you are not forced to buy anything from the cash shop, yet in WOW you are forced to pay monthly subs.
Just like monthly subs in WOW are intended to increase revenue for the game, the cash shop in GW2 is also intended to increase revenue. Difference is that GW2's main source of income will be from the purchase of the game itself, not like WOW where they can subsidize the cost of the box with their main source of income, monthly subs. The most obvious and the biggest difference (I'll say it again in case you missed it) is that GW2 will not force it's playerbase to purchase from the cash shop whereas WOW does force its playerbase to pay the monthly sub.
I also don't think that GW2 is going to kill WOW, and based on the released information from Anet devs, that is also not their intention. It appeas that Anet devs' intention is to "beat" wow, not necessarily kill it. As to how exactly they intend to "beat" wow and what exactly does it mean to "beat" wow is still being debated. So long as WOW continues to make money for Blizzard, I doubt they'll just end it, as you say. WOW is in decline, it is dying a very slow and painful death. Only Blizzard can kill WOW and they're doing a great job at it so far.
I also don't think that GW2 is going to kill WOW, and based on the released information from Anet devs, that is also not their intention. It appears that Anet devs' intention is to "beat" wow, not necessarily kill it. As to how exactly they intend to "beat" wow and what exactly does it mean to "beat" wow is still being debated.
fully agree - ANET intends to grow the mmo gaming space, attracting players that do not like subscribing to mmos
So wow costs nearly 500 million a year to run.. So will gw2 cost a similar amount to run? if thats the case they are gonna need to sell mroe copies.. or wait the cash shop thats where GW2 will make money.. Cash shop = sub. Most players will probally end up spending a similar amount in the cash shop as they would by paying a sub.. maybe more..
Also nothing is going to kill wow and its about time devs realised they need to stop aiming to kill wow off.. Not saying this is what the GW2 devs are trying to do but its waht the guy writing the article is trying to say..
Its not gonna happen..people love wow and will continue to love wow until blizzard decide its time to end it by releasing their next MMORPG..
Caldrin...
So... if GW2's cash shop equals monthly subs, does that mean that I play wow and opt out from paying monthly subs? In GW2 you are not forced to buy anything from the cash shop, yet in WOW you are forced to pay monthly subs.
Yeah its true you wont be forced to, but you will probally end up buying stuff afterall they need to make money.. sure the on going costs might be a bit less than WOW as the guy stated above.. (good info by the way) but they are here to make money and from what i have seen of the items in the cash shop so far there are things in there people will have no issues spending money on and im pretty sure most people will.. at the end of the day its just a different way for them making cash.. for everyone that flat out refuses to buy somthing from the cash shop there will probally 2 others will to spend double.. If it was not a viable form of income for an MMORPG they would not be doing it... and people making out that the cash shop wont even factor into it are just wrong.. the cash shop will be jsut as much of a cash generator for GW2 as a sub is for wow..
AS for GW1 not having a cash shop at release, yeah thats true but the GW1 took a lot less to run than a standard MMORPG as it was not a MMORPG lol it was like a co-op rpg quest hubs = fps style lobbys.. plus cash shops back then where not common at all.. i would have thought box sales alone easily more than covered the cost of the game and maintaining the servers.
Anyway this is all assumption on my part hehe and you know what they say about that
Ill also say this again, devs should not be out there to try and beat wow.. when you look at all the AAA mmorpgs out there wow is an exception not the norm. The average subs for AAA mmorpg where probally around the 500k mark.. EQ got to about that and SWG went over that quite a bit.. most other AAA titles sit around that as well.. I really think devs should be aiming for those kind of numbers instead of 10 million or so subs that wow has lol
Also nothing is going to kill wow and its about time devs realised they need to stop aiming to kill wow off.. Not saying this is what the GW2 devs are trying to do but its waht the guy writing the article is trying to say..
No one will kill WoW.
WoW will kill WoW .
Many ways a MMO can die.
Devs not listening to players.
MMO gets dated with graphics and content.
Failure to understand MMO trends and play style.
Putting out low grade expansions. I don't like POM so not sure if you would call it low grade or what.
The list goes on.
What we want to see is players 'JOIN' GW2 and stay put.
Devs listening is a big deal to me. Yes its their game they made, but we are paying for it and if many people expression the same opinion the dev's should listen.
So wow costs nearly 500 million a year to run.. So will gw2 cost a similar amount to run? if thats the case they are gonna need to sell mroe copies.. or wait the cash shop thats where GW2 will make money.. Cash shop = sub. Most players will probally end up spending a similar amount in the cash shop as they would by paying a sub.. maybe more..
Also nothing is going to kill wow and its about time devs realised they need to stop aiming to kill wow off.. Not saying this is what the GW2 devs are trying to do but its waht the guy writing the article is trying to say..
Its not gonna happen..people love wow and will continue to love wow until blizzard decide its time to end it by releasing their next MMORPG..
WoW costs nowhere near 500 million to run per year. It's less than half that.
The relevent part is near the bottom of the page but this is what it says:
World of Warcraft (WoW) has helped ATVI maintain its stock price, with this one single game providing roughly 30% of the revenue for the entire company via its expansion packs and monthly payments. Subscription revenue alone totaled $1.2 billion both in 2008 and 2009, and an additional $1.36 billion in 2010. Corresponding costs (the overhead cost of maintaining WoW’s virtual world) totaled a mere $404 million in the first two years mentioned, and $241 million in 2010. This means that WoW subscriptions have generated gross margins over 80% consistently.
The reason WoW costs around $200 million per year to run is because it has 10 million subscribers, or 9 million now, if the latest reports are accurate. That's a lot of servers to run, hence the high cost of maintaining them. If GW2 has, lets say 1/3 or the player base WoW has, then we can surmise that the running costs would also be around 1/3 of Blizzards.
As for whether it could harm WoW, read the whole article. It's an interesting theory.
Yea, What gets me is the way they are going about this.
Blizzard/actv wants to sell the company.
So they release a terrible game with non-exsistent testing (Diablo3). Then they ignore their customers, relay no information and barely update it. For anyone who was playing Diablo3, I believe there wasn't a blue post for 2 weeks. In any case, the game is dieing and their is no recovery (Fail). Well, not really so much fail, they did make a killing on sales, but the companies reputation got smashed.
SC2 gets released. They take away everything that was 'good' about SC1 and add some of the worst features I've ever seen in a game to date. To top it off, they never update, they never communicate and despite the complaints from the people in the beta/etc, they did nothing to solve the issue. Now they are promising everything that 'should' have been at release in the next expansion pack HOTS. (Please, for the love of god, don't buy it) So now, SC2 is dieing. Anyone following the tournament scene can see this. Decreased prize money, Decreased viewers, Decreased interest. It is being shown up by Leuage of Legends, because they actually 'learned' from SC1 and added the features that were good. Again, More company reputation getting smashed.
WOW is on its last legs. (maybe not in terms of gaming, but in terms of 'support' to the company, yes), so Blizzard decides to release ninja pandas. You know what this reminds me of... You know those really old guys, who are trying to be cool, but aren't. Kinda like the Dad or Mom trying to be young, but just fails miserably.. Yea, that is Ninja Pandas. How much fail can there be in one game? how desperate and sad can an attempt be? Trust me, it is sad. It's like a Mom who is wearing her daughters clothing, which just makes her look slutty, even older and pathetic. I can't speak for the community, since I'm not active with WOW any longer, but the point remains.
Now the company is trying to sell itself? Who is running that program? It's like asking for investors to sink money into the Titantic while its sinking.
Yea, What gets me is the way they are going about this.
Blizzard/actv wants to sell the company.
So they release a terrible game with non-exsistent testing (Diablo3). Then they ignore their customers, relay no information and barely update it. For anyone who was playing Diablo3, I believe there wasn't a blue post for 2 weeks. In any case, the game is dieing and their is no recovery (Fail). Well, not really so much fail, they did make a killing on sales, but the companies reputation got smashed.
SC2 gets released. They take away everything that was 'good' about SC1 and add some of the worst features I've ever seen in a game to date. To top it off, they never update, they never communicate and despite the complaints from the people in the beta/etc, they did nothing to solve the issue. Now they are promising everything that 'should' have been at release in the next expansion pack HOTS. (Please, for the love of god, don't buy it) So now, SC2 is dieing. Anyone following the tournament scene can see this. Decreased prize money, Decreased viewers, Decreased interest. It is being shown up by Leuage of Legends, because they actually 'learned' from SC1 and added the features that were good. Again, More company reputation getting smashed.
WOW is on its last legs. (maybe not in terms of gaming, but in terms of 'support' to the company, yes), so Blizzard decides to release ninja pandas. You know what this reminds me of... You know those really old guys, who are trying to be cool, but aren't. Kinda like the Dad or Mom trying to be young, but just fails miserably.. Yea, that is Ninja Pandas. How much fail can there be in one game? how desperate and sad can an attempt be? Trust me, it is sad. It's like a Mom who is wearing her daughters clothing, which just makes her look slutty, even older and pathetic. I can't speak for the community, since I'm not active with WOW any longer, but the point remains.
Now the company is trying to sell itself? Who is running that program? It's like asking for investors to sink money into the Titantic while its sinking.
Activision/Blizzard is not trying to sell itself, Vivendi, the majority share holder is trying to sell most of its shares in order to balance their poor financial situation.
Though WOW has seen better days, and many had complaints regarding D3, Activision/Blizzard is still very much alive and successful.
Yea, What gets me is the way they are going about this.
Blizzard/actv wants to sell the company.
So they release a terrible game with non-exsistent testing (Diablo3). Then they ignore their customers, relay no information and barely update it. For anyone who was playing Diablo3, I believe there wasn't a blue post for 2 weeks. In any case, the game is dieing and their is no recovery (Fail). Well, not really so much fail, they did make a killing on sales, but the companies reputation got smashed.
SC2 gets released. They take away everything that was 'good' about SC1 and add some of the worst features I've ever seen in a game to date. To top it off, they never update, they never communicate and despite the complaints from the people in the beta/etc, they did nothing to solve the issue. Now they are promising everything that 'should' have been at release in the next expansion pack HOTS. (Please, for the love of god, don't buy it) So now, SC2 is dieing. Anyone following the tournament scene can see this. Decreased prize money, Decreased viewers, Decreased interest. It is being shown up by Leuage of Legends, because they actually 'learned' from SC1 and added the features that were good. Again, More company reputation getting smashed.
WOW is on its last legs. (maybe not in terms of gaming, but in terms of 'support' to the company, yes), so Blizzard decides to release ninja pandas. You know what this reminds me of... You know those really old guys, who are trying to be cool, but aren't. Kinda like the Dad or Mom trying to be young, but just fails miserably.. Yea, that is Ninja Pandas. How much fail can there be in one game? how desperate and sad can an attempt be? Trust me, it is sad. It's like a Mom who is wearing her daughters clothing, which just makes her look slutty, even older and pathetic. I can't speak for the community, since I'm not active with WOW any longer, but the point remains.
Now the company is trying to sell itself? Who is running that program? It's like asking for investors to sink money into the Titantic while its sinking.
Diablo 3 is still a great game. I enjoyed very much my time with it, so I would never describe it as a "terrible game" not even close. Maybe it won't be the golden egg goose Blizzard hoped it would be, but it is nothing to me anyway.
SC2 is such a bad game that most E-sport organizations have moved from SC1 to SC2, yeaaaaah must be an awful game, amIrite, full of bugs and horribly balanced? Also my experience with it was nothing but fuuuuuuun, albeit I just played the single player campaign, so cannot really talk about multiplayer. I know I look forward to Heart of the Swarm for the same reason, the single player campaign
WoW is declining, that is undeniable. But Pandaria is not just "ninja panda", it is much more and will prolly end up to be the best WoW expansion to date (surely better than Cata) thanks to new way to level up and new things to do at end game (scenario, dungeon challenges, pet battles, a huge update to the daily system etc.). I do not know if it will be enough to stop the loss of subscribers though. GW2 does everything WoW does, but better. They do, however, not have the name Blizzard has. Then again WoW did not get 10 million subscribers over night, so there is time for GW2 to grow.
And finally, as someone else pointed out, VIVENDI owns majority of Activision/Blizzard and they are looking to sell their majority share, either as a single package or in smaller pieces.
So far they have not found anyone to buy the single package so they will probably sell it in smaller pieces. You can speculate all you want on WHY is Vivendi doing this (my bet is that they perceive the company has reached its peak and they want to make a killing in selling it).
"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"
Originally posted by Sylvarii Oh look! another WOW is doooomed thread,jeez i coukd not of called this one. As much as i like GW2,anyone or writer thinking WOW is doomed is delusional. Brazil..China is all i need to say.
I think this thread is more about how GW2 will effect WOW, not necessarily the doom of WOW. I think most everyone can agree that at least in a small way, GW2 will most likely effect WOW. I could very well be wrong though. Though considering how Blizzard has "stepped" out of its normal routine in regards to releasing their expansion, as in releasing MoP one month after GW2 while also releasing patch 5.0.1. around the same time of GW2's release, I think Anet should see it as a compliment.
I'm not saying Blizzard is freakin out and screaming "bloody murder!" and getting their seppuku swords ready, but I think it's worth noting; especially considering WOW's continual decline.
Originally posted by Illyssia I think GW2 launch is going to crucify the Panda expansion and force that company to a free-to-play model.
Doubtful. There are enough fans and people will buy anything with the Blizz logo on the box. Rift and TSW will be crucified before WoW will.
Yes this seems alot more likely but me personally wants to see Blizz crash and burn... why? Well, pandas and the amount of hacked accounts... did I mention pandas... wtf is up with that anywayz?
Here's a thought, some new releases actually push people back to much earlier games that they've played before rather than destroy those games. For example after ToR I didn't go and buy TSW, I went back to LOTRO because I knew what to expect and many of things ToR lacked I knew I could find in LOTRO. Been playing for a couple of weeks, loving it so much i'm considering not buying GW2 now. Although initially some games do suffer with a new release, if a new release is bad people will drift back to what they know best. Simply being a new release doesn't mean GW2 will kill any other game, it has to be quality and hold on to players it takes from other games, especially games like Rift which has developed a pretty solid and loyal community.
To be honest I think TSW will suffer most, the cracks are already beginning to show.
while Blizzard's subscriptions are down, income projections based on WOW microtransactions are way up.
Coupled with the fact that WOW/Blizzard is the market leader with 34% of the market, they appear to be the most financially robust MMO out there.
Anet has not released any concrete sales or player population figures related to GW2, so objectively at this point they are not even on the map. In fact thier parent company NCSoft is reporting losses: NCsoft makes Q2 loss amid spiralling costs
I am sure if GW2's numbers were anywhere near the magnitude of WOW's they would have broadcast them loudly. With the pre-purchase program, it is doubtful that there will be any surge of purchases on release, since any one interested in the game has pre-purchased to get into the BW3's and headstart. I would love to see GW2 succeed, but so far the numbers just are not there.
Comments
While i agree with the loyal fanbase of WoW, i was a fan for almost 8 years of WoW before pulling the plug out.
Some facts people are overlooking this time is the following.
1. Death servers, they are many, WoW Eu has 125 servers, 12 are full - 20 are medium - 90 are empty / low
Blizzard let those servers rot to death and doesnt intervene on those death servers, wich creates a domino effect.
Who wants to play I AM LEGEND ?
2. Broken promises
They promised faster contend updates in Cataclysm,.......8 months have passed since the last raid instance named Dragon Soul....
People payed 12.99 euro a month in that period without getting any decent updates for their money.
3. MoP
There are many fans who love Panda's, but their are also many that dislike the cute little bears.
For many it seems WoW is targeting a very young audiance, Pet battles (pokemon style) and Pandabears (kung fu panda) are proof of those actions.
A very large amount of people hate those decisions, and are in a twilight zone.
4.- 1.1 million players unsubbed in Q2
No suprise, but who expected that before the summer vacation even started ?
Q3 will hold numbers of the summer, GW2 release and Annual Pass members who runs out their 1 year subscription.
MoP might bring a chunk of those players back, but by no means all those players are returning.
5. Guildwars 2
While it has no sub, it has a very high attraction factot for bored players.
GW2 is comming at the right moment for all those players who are bored to death with ther 8 year old WoW who seems to have lost their touch with their loyal playerbase.
Me included, i wont be looking back to WoW after playing 1 GW2 beta.
The king of the Hill is showing cracks and the foundation of WoW in crumbling, the rippel effect of death servers and friend lists getting empty is showing effect.
2 bad expansions in a row is for many the final straw.
Toss in GW2 who gets nothing but love and good karma and you might see a BIG shift incomming this year.
What people do seem to overlook when looking at WoW subs numbers is 9.1 million sub isnt realy true.
I bet 5 to 6 million are pay per hour asian players, who pay a few cent per hour.
EU might even have dipped below 1.5 million subs when you look at all those death servers.
We should see some real numbers in Q3 and Q4 tough, i bet they wont look good for Blizzard
Isn't Voldemort,Panda in disguise? Or is it the other way around?
It was one analyst and he predicted 3.2 million copies sold, not necessarily 3.2 million players. Over the course of the years GW1 and its expansions have sold over 7 million copies, but that doesn't mean there are over 7 million players.
Don't get me wrong, I already cancelled my wow sub and have pre-purchased GW2 (played in all bwe's and stress tests) and can't wait to play the game, but we should be conservative in our expectations regarding GW2; no need to hype things ourselves.
So wow costs nearly 500 million a year to run.. So will gw2 cost a similar amount to run? if thats the case they are gonna need to sell mroe copies.. or wait the cash shop thats where GW2 will make money.. Cash shop = sub. Most players will probally end up spending a similar amount in the cash shop as they would by paying a sub.. maybe more..
Also nothing is going to kill wow and its about time devs realised they need to stop aiming to kill wow off.. Not saying this is what the GW2 devs are trying to do but its waht the guy writing the article is trying to say..
Its not gonna happen..people love wow and will continue to love wow until blizzard decide its time to end it by releasing their next MMORPG..
I've played TSW in beta and for a month after release.
I played GW2 beta week end events.
TSW is more similar to SW:TOR ( a better SW:TOR if I may say so) in quest structures and has a unique skill system. GW2 is similar..... to nothing I ever played before.
So yea, GW2 IS different.
Will this means it will not suffer the fate of most other MMOs released since WoW? I hope so, but I surely do not know. It FEELs that way to me. I bought the original GW1 but none of the expansions. I am here ready to buy GW2 and all and every single expansion they will make, if the game continues to be what I saw in BWE3.
"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"
so much bitterness. so you fail at wow? take it easy, move on, go outside, dont get all angry and web warriory. im sure youll enjoy hello kitty island of whatever other f2p game you plumb for.
all these kinds of threads do is set up a new game to fail. just watch this space.
GW2 will not incur support costs like WOW
it will probably be higher than GW1 tho
worth noting that GW1 had no store -- until 1 year after release
Inside the world of Guild Wars
http://gigaom.com/2006/10/26/guild-wars/
When NCSoft acquired Arena Net, Guild Wars’ developer, Garriott and his team discerned an audience not being served by the traditional subscription-based MMO. (“There’s a large number of people who don’t want to pay 15 dollars a month”, as he puts it.) Guild Wars was designed from the ground up to capture that niche, with community and help tools that minimized the need for frequent customer service– a key money sink for MMOs. By Garriott’s estimate, Guild Wars incurs 80% less support costs than NCsoft’s more traditional MMOs, like their Lineage series. There are no Game Masters in Guild Wars, wandering around the world settling disputes and helping players—and charging NCsoft by the hour.
The other cost-saving feature comes from economy of bandwidth. MMO players know all about long download times, when a game has an update, with patches that often exceed 100 megabytes, and thousands of players simultaneously piling on, to get it. (“It can cost us a million dollars for an update patch,” Garriott says of other NCSoft MMOs. “You peak when you release a giant download.”) By contrast, Guild Wars streams its updates in small chunks, depending on what part of the world you’re in. “Instead of having peaks of bandwidth usage… [the update] streams it evenly over time, so the costs don’t peak.”
EQ2 fan sites
Caldrin...
So... if GW2's cash shop equals monthly subs, does that mean that I play wow and opt out from paying monthly subs? In GW2 you are not forced to buy anything from the cash shop, yet in WOW you are forced to pay monthly subs.
Just like monthly subs in WOW are intended to increase revenue for the game, the cash shop in GW2 is also intended to increase revenue. Difference is that GW2's main source of income will be from the purchase of the game itself, not like WOW where they can subsidize the cost of the box with their main source of income, monthly subs. The most obvious and the biggest difference (I'll say it again in case you missed it) is that GW2 will not force it's playerbase to purchase from the cash shop whereas WOW does force its playerbase to pay the monthly sub.
I also don't think that GW2 is going to kill WOW, and based on the released information from Anet devs, that is also not their intention. It appeas that Anet devs' intention is to "beat" wow, not necessarily kill it. As to how exactly they intend to "beat" wow and what exactly does it mean to "beat" wow is still being debated. So long as WOW continues to make money for Blizzard, I doubt they'll just end it, as you say. WOW is in decline, it is dying a very slow and painful death. Only Blizzard can kill WOW and they're doing a great job at it so far.
fully agree - ANET intends to grow the mmo gaming space, attracting players that do not like subscribing to mmos
EQ2 fan sites
Yeah its true you wont be forced to, but you will probally end up buying stuff afterall they need to make money.. sure the on going costs might be a bit less than WOW as the guy stated above.. (good info by the way) but they are here to make money and from what i have seen of the items in the cash shop so far there are things in there people will have no issues spending money on and im pretty sure most people will.. at the end of the day its just a different way for them making cash.. for everyone that flat out refuses to buy somthing from the cash shop there will probally 2 others will to spend double..
If it was not a viable form of income for an MMORPG they would not be doing it... and people making out that the cash shop wont even factor into it are just wrong.. the cash shop will be jsut as much of a cash generator for GW2 as a sub is for wow..
AS for GW1 not having a cash shop at release, yeah thats true but the GW1 took a lot less to run than a standard MMORPG as it was not a MMORPG lol it was like a co-op rpg quest hubs = fps style lobbys.. plus cash shops back then where not common at all.. i would have thought box sales alone easily more than covered the cost of the game and maintaining the servers.
Anyway this is all assumption on my part hehe and you know what they say about that
Ill also say this again, devs should not be out there to try and beat wow.. when you look at all the AAA mmorpgs out there wow is an exception not the norm. The average subs for AAA mmorpg where probally around the 500k mark.. EQ got to about that and SWG went over that quite a bit.. most other AAA titles sit around that as well.. I really think devs should be aiming for those kind of numbers instead of 10 million or so subs that wow has lol
No one will kill WoW.
WoW will kill WoW .
Many ways a MMO can die.
Devs not listening to players.
MMO gets dated with graphics and content.
Failure to understand MMO trends and play style.
Putting out low grade expansions. I don't like POM so not sure if you would call it low grade or what.
The list goes on.
What we want to see is players 'JOIN' GW2 and stay put.
Devs listening is a big deal to me. Yes its their game they made, but we are paying for it and if many people expression the same opinion the dev's should listen.
The world we know is going away http://www.graystatemovie.com/
Look up Agenda 21 as well.
WoW costs nowhere near 500 million to run per year. It's less than half that.
Read this article on Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2012/08/02/world-of-warcraft-guild-wars-2-and-vivendi-activisions-achilles-heel/
The relevent part is near the bottom of the page but this is what it says:
World of Warcraft (WoW) has helped ATVI maintain its stock price, with this one single game providing roughly 30% of the revenue for the entire company via its expansion packs and monthly payments. Subscription revenue alone totaled $1.2 billion both in 2008 and 2009, and an additional $1.36 billion in 2010. Corresponding costs (the overhead cost of maintaining WoW’s virtual world) totaled a mere $404 million in the first two years mentioned, and $241 million in 2010. This means that WoW subscriptions have generated gross margins over 80% consistently.
The reason WoW costs around $200 million per year to run is because it has 10 million subscribers, or 9 million now, if the latest reports are accurate. That's a lot of servers to run, hence the high cost of maintaining them. If GW2 has, lets say 1/3 or the player base WoW has, then we can surmise that the running costs would also be around 1/3 of Blizzards.
As for whether it could harm WoW, read the whole article. It's an interesting theory.
Yea, What gets me is the way they are going about this.
Blizzard/actv wants to sell the company.
So they release a terrible game with non-exsistent testing (Diablo3). Then they ignore their customers, relay no information and barely update it. For anyone who was playing Diablo3, I believe there wasn't a blue post for 2 weeks. In any case, the game is dieing and their is no recovery (Fail). Well, not really so much fail, they did make a killing on sales, but the companies reputation got smashed.
SC2 gets released. They take away everything that was 'good' about SC1 and add some of the worst features I've ever seen in a game to date. To top it off, they never update, they never communicate and despite the complaints from the people in the beta/etc, they did nothing to solve the issue. Now they are promising everything that 'should' have been at release in the next expansion pack HOTS. (Please, for the love of god, don't buy it) So now, SC2 is dieing. Anyone following the tournament scene can see this. Decreased prize money, Decreased viewers, Decreased interest. It is being shown up by Leuage of Legends, because they actually 'learned' from SC1 and added the features that were good. Again, More company reputation getting smashed.
WOW is on its last legs. (maybe not in terms of gaming, but in terms of 'support' to the company, yes), so Blizzard decides to release ninja pandas. You know what this reminds me of... You know those really old guys, who are trying to be cool, but aren't. Kinda like the Dad or Mom trying to be young, but just fails miserably.. Yea, that is Ninja Pandas. How much fail can there be in one game? how desperate and sad can an attempt be? Trust me, it is sad. It's like a Mom who is wearing her daughters clothing, which just makes her look slutty, even older and pathetic. I can't speak for the community, since I'm not active with WOW any longer, but the point remains.
Now the company is trying to sell itself? Who is running that program? It's like asking for investors to sink money into the Titantic while its sinking.
Activision/Blizzard is not trying to sell itself, Vivendi, the majority share holder is trying to sell most of its shares in order to balance their poor financial situation.
Though WOW has seen better days, and many had complaints regarding D3, Activision/Blizzard is still very much alive and successful.
or maybe just GOD !!!
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYEQRAoY6alUmaO3ey3E+5Ex2jdqTey9woKtpdFwKA;TwAg0CnowxgjAHbNOck4siYMyGiJGA
Diablo 3 is still a great game. I enjoyed very much my time with it, so I would never describe it as a "terrible game" not even close. Maybe it won't be the golden egg goose Blizzard hoped it would be, but it is nothing to me anyway.
SC2 is such a bad game that most E-sport organizations have moved from SC1 to SC2, yeaaaaah must be an awful game, amIrite, full of bugs and horribly balanced? Also my experience with it was nothing but fuuuuuuun, albeit I just played the single player campaign, so cannot really talk about multiplayer. I know I look forward to Heart of the Swarm for the same reason, the single player campaign
WoW is declining, that is undeniable. But Pandaria is not just "ninja panda", it is much more and will prolly end up to be the best WoW expansion to date (surely better than Cata) thanks to new way to level up and new things to do at end game (scenario, dungeon challenges, pet battles, a huge update to the daily system etc.). I do not know if it will be enough to stop the loss of subscribers though. GW2 does everything WoW does, but better. They do, however, not have the name Blizzard has. Then again WoW did not get 10 million subscribers over night, so there is time for GW2 to grow.
And finally, as someone else pointed out, VIVENDI owns majority of Activision/Blizzard and they are looking to sell their majority share, either as a single package or in smaller pieces.
So far they have not found anyone to buy the single package so they will probably sell it in smaller pieces. You can speculate all you want on WHY is Vivendi doing this (my bet is that they perceive the company has reached its peak and they want to make a killing in selling it).
"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"
As much as i like GW2,anyone or writer thinking WOW is doomed is delusional.
Brazil..China is all i need to say.
I think this thread is more about how GW2 will effect WOW, not necessarily the doom of WOW. I think most everyone can agree that at least in a small way, GW2 will most likely effect WOW. I could very well be wrong though. Though considering how Blizzard has "stepped" out of its normal routine in regards to releasing their expansion, as in releasing MoP one month after GW2 while also releasing patch 5.0.1. around the same time of GW2's release, I think Anet should see it as a compliment.
I'm not saying Blizzard is freakin out and screaming "bloody murder!" and getting their seppuku swords ready, but I think it's worth noting; especially considering WOW's continual decline.
Yes this seems alot more likely but me personally wants to see Blizz crash and burn... why? Well, pandas and the amount of hacked accounts... did I mention pandas... wtf is up with that anywayz?
Here's a thought, some new releases actually push people back to much earlier games that they've played before rather than destroy those games. For example after ToR I didn't go and buy TSW, I went back to LOTRO because I knew what to expect and many of things ToR lacked I knew I could find in LOTRO. Been playing for a couple of weeks, loving it so much i'm considering not buying GW2 now. Although initially some games do suffer with a new release, if a new release is bad people will drift back to what they know best. Simply being a new release doesn't mean GW2 will kill any other game, it has to be quality and hold on to players it takes from other games, especially games like Rift which has developed a pretty solid and loyal community.
To be honest I think TSW will suffer most, the cracks are already beginning to show.
"It will" ... "It will not" ... "There will be" .... etc
So many armchair analysts in here ... Good guy, Bad guy... Right or Wrong ... Black or White .. etc ..
Show some nuance, people.
***** Before hitting that reply button, please READ the WHOLE thread you're about to post in *****
Alot of bluster and trash talk here in this thread.
Lets looks at some facts.
WOW has been and continues to be the top grossing MMO by a huge margin over competitors.
According to this report: General : New Report Reveals Declining MMO Subscription Revenue
while Blizzard's subscriptions are down, income projections based on WOW microtransactions are way up.
Coupled with the fact that WOW/Blizzard is the market leader with 34% of the market, they appear to be the most financially robust MMO out there.
Anet has not released any concrete sales or player population figures related to GW2, so objectively at this point they are not even on the map. In fact thier parent company NCSoft is reporting losses: NCsoft makes Q2 loss amid spiralling costs
I am sure if GW2's numbers were anywhere near the magnitude of WOW's they would have broadcast them loudly. With the pre-purchase program, it is doubtful that there will be any surge of purchases on release, since any one interested in the game has pre-purchased to get into the BW3's and headstart. I would love to see GW2 succeed, but so far the numbers just are not there.