This whole topic is a moot point. Blizzard doesn't release official numbers for this very reason: to support any propaganda it wants to, one way or the other.
I've seen absolutely no substantial evidence for either argument, that WOW is starting to sag a bit, or that it's as strong as ever (or more). All I see are people hurling dubious sources and insults at one another.
Well, ya'll carry on. I quit playing the game, and I can be patient to see how things tumble out in the end.
And without acting like a little monster in the process, too.
Originally posted by Eindrachen This whole topic is a moot point. Blizzard doesn't release official numbers for this very reason: to support any propaganda it wants to, one way or the other. I've seen absolutely no substantial evidence for either argument, that WOW is starting to sag a bit, or that it's as strong as ever (or more). All I see are people hurling dubious sources and insults at one another. Well, ya'll carry on. I quit playing the game, and I can be patient to see how things tumble out in the end. And without acting like a little monster in the process, too.
Blizzard's 2005 annual report stated their subscribers at that time (5M+), we won't know if it has increased or decreased until their next annual report.
Originally posted by Pride7 Originally posted by Celestian Originally posted by Pride7 The #1 Ranked MMO on this site (Eve) is not even in the top 10 in terms of subscribers according to MMOGCHART.com, so that should show you the correlation between this boards ratings and reality.
So you will believe what mmogchart posts but you won't believe whats on a ranking here? Neither are accurate.
My personal opinion on WoW, it gets old, fast and with the slowest development cycle EVER it's not hard to believe. Pretty much the only new content was raid and to raid in WoW you gotta get in a guild that can field 40 people which is about 70 players.
It's to bad, I was hoping the game would be about PvP/RVR at end game but they pretty much ruined that.
You really don't believe Eve is in the top 10 in terms of subscribers, do you? Besides MMOCHART you can reference NPD sales data. Granted unit sales do not equal subscribers but do you really think Eve has more subs than WOW, EQ2, EQ1, FF, SWG, GW, DAoC, CoH & CoV, UO, Lineage, or Lineage 2? Now I am sure the fanbois feel that way but that doesn't make it so... Personally I think AC is the best MMO ever and that isn't even on the list.
I never said I believed the polls/ratings here nor did I say I believed mmogchart. Infact I said why would someone believe mmogchart and not believe the ratings here since both are not accurate.
Read the mmogchart faq, he makes "best guess" when he has no hard data. He has no insider information to all those companies and thus cannot make even remotely accurate accounting. Blizzard for example is very vague at best at their numbers but they would like everyone to think they have 5 million active accounts. Only they know the truth.
This isn't a discussion about WoW, it's a discussion about Blizzard.
If 2 years ago a company had made an identical game to WoW in every aspect and had named it <GenericMMOGName> noone would be wondering why on earth it's at 6.0 at mmorpg.com now.
WoW is a mediocre game that had 1 thing and 1 thing only in it's favor: The Blizzard tag.
I have to agree with the person that said that Blizzard fanbois make the worst type of Blizzard Haters. I used to be a huge Blizzard fanboi, but then blizzard made Warcraft III and WoW. Withing record time, blizzard had gone from making innovative and balanced games to generic mainstream boring games, that if produced by any other label wouldn't never cut it on the market.
Never underestimate what the label does for a product and never forget that quantity never denoted quality.
Noone can dispute that WoW is on the top concerning sales. The same way that noone can dispute that EVE has been on longer than WoW and hasn't dropped an inch in ratings.
It's just pointless arguing over those 2 values... if you really want to compare you should be looking into yearly percentile increase of subscribers and retention rates.
WoW is a good game.. not a great game. It has been well done but has nothing interesting in its gameplay. If Blizzard have made Dark and Light, DnL would be a great game cause Blizzard know what ppl want.
For 80 - 90% of its actual players, WoW is the first - and only - MMO. For the other 10 - 20% WoW is simply the newest good game or the one with more pve content.
With the coming MMOs like Age of Conan and of course WAR, the WoW ranking going down cause ppl are more focused on the new comers.
Originally posted by Munki Subjectivly, WoW is the best MMORPG on the market but thats just my opinion, Im not a professional reviewer, I dont run a website, so my opionion doenst have much Clout. WoW has countless amazing reviews from credible people. That, while still being subjetive, should be worth something. For a more qualitative approach to WoW and its rankings. how can we determine the quality of a game. # of players - This doesnt lie, there is no way to bend thing, this is a number of poeple who play, or currently playing. You cant argue with numbers. Profits - These dont lie either, you cant warp them, you just compare them straight. In business, the more money you make, the more of a sucess you are. I dont care what you say, money runs the world. If you make more, you didnt better. A game is a business lets judge it as such. Updates - Not a good idea to judge.. how much is enough, when is it not enough, when are the patches too fast and pointless. This is FAAR too subjective. So were not gona touch this one, its too subjective and personal. Rankings - Subjective, but these count for something. People look at these, these influence people. This is importaint, I wouldnt rank it as much as Profits or players, becuase this is a very subjective quality, but it is also influencial... For the sake of my argument tho, I will ignore these due to the fact they are subjective. I like it Whoopdy dee. I liked the Movie Van Wilder, does that make it a sucess. As a business venure, no. Ground Breaking says who.. according to who, is there a number you can assign to the "groundbreaking-ness" of a game? No, you cant and thus, it is a subjective quality. Now, some of you might be thinking, Whats wrong with subjective qualities? They count for something. Yes, I would love to say your personal opinion matters for something, but in the end, it matters for very little. On forums you get your ideas across and that gives your opinions a little more validity, but in the end, you as a person have very little clout. Your opinion is just the opinion of one of the millions if people out there. I wont kid myself, I like WoW, but I dont think thats enough reason to call the game a sucess. Im just a student sitting here on my laptop playing a game. Sure Im a MMORPG vet, but so are other people with contrasting opinions. Whos is more valid? Nobodies.. and thats not a reference to KoH :P In terms of subscribers and profits, Few games have captured the market like WoW has. ESPECIALLY in the American market. MMOcharts appears to be down atm, but last I checked WoW was growning in player base, and shows no sign of stopping, especially since a expansion pack is comming. Now, EVE is a fun game, but does it churn out the profits of WoW? does it have the same player Base? So your Qualitative Analysis of the game may differ, but honestly, everyones will, so who really cares what some guys in California who plays mmorpgs thinks? If I was looking for a game and I wanted some Opinions then yes, I wouldnt mind his unput, but honestly, when ranking games, qualitative assesment has no value really.
1. # players - take the number of players on the server you are playing and you get a more relevant figure. The amount of people that play on the same server is what counts. 2. Profits - only really matter for the future. Says nothing about the quality of the game.
WoW may be the best MMORPG for those looking for a simple MMORPG with plenty of grind and powergaming. As a more mature MMORPG player I tend to look for more depth and a true virtual world to get immersed in. WoW is more like a multiplayer game.
Originally posted by potapithikos Never underestimate what the label does for a product and never forget that quantity never denoted quality.
Where "never" = usually.
If a product is poor quality, many people do not buy it. Word gets around.
If a product is good value, or high quality, many people are willing to buy it, word gets around.
Fundamental laws of marketing.
.
Laws of engineering.....
The more you produce, the better your design becomes. With each production cycle, refinements to the process are made.
Profits/profitablilty does not define the quality of a game, nor for the end user, the success of it.
However it is symptomatic of a good product to also be profitable.
For a product such as an MMO where population life is a factor, regular sales is a key element in the games quality and success. An MMO that is not profitable will fail. An MMO that is less profitable will recieve less investment. Cheaper expansions, lesser updates, less servers.
In WoW, my servers are similar in population to my servers in COH, but WoW's content is bigger and expanding faster. When a WoW server reaches capacity a new one is instantly added, while in COH they fudge a second Atlas Park onto the same server.
They have more support staff, in COH when I ask for tech support, I am refused. In WoW, my billing webpage is personally customised as per my feedback request, without even specific request.
I prefer COH, I enjoy the game more, it's a quality game and the theme is one I enjoy. But WoW is a higher quality game. It os a very good game, but because of it's budget it can achieve higher production values. And does.
Lets compare it to another game whose theme I prefer, Eve online. Eve is technically cutting edge and comparatively low budget. It cannot afford localised servers so there is frequent and noticeable lag. The server loads are run to capacity before upgrading and the stability is very poor. The programming team have limited resources and it is not unheard of for updates to cause server crashing/game breaking bugs that take weeks to rectify.
Despite my enjoyment of Eve and my love for it's theme, it is a lower quality game than WoW, it quite simply doesn't compare.
Whatever else WoW isn't, it is not a low quality product. It has the highest production quality of any MMO I have ever seen. It's not my favourite MMO, but it is the best quality one.
Originally posted by baff Originally posted by potapithikos Never underestimate what the label does for a product and never forget that quantity never denoted quality.
Where "never" = usually.
If a product is poor quality, many people do not buy it. Word gets around.
If a product is good value, or high quality, many people are willing to buy it, word gets around.
Fundamental laws of marketing.
.
Laws of engineering.....
The more you produce, the better your design becomes. With each production cycle, refinements to the process are made.
if a game is easy, lots of kids and people that don't normally play that sort of game will play it. the pretty colors, no brainer leveling (your stats are added for you), and basically easy mode (no death penalties, no item loss, et cetera) also add to that. does that mean it's a good product? or does that just mean it's pretty and incredibly easy; BUT, they feel like they can play the games that the *gamers* play?
not sure what your thing has to do with quantity doesn't equal quality, but hey, most of your posts don't make much sense.
the initial wow onslaught, no matter what morons claim, was from wc/sc/d2/b.net fans.
american idol and backstreet boys and britney spears were/are all good value and high quality? lemmings, and kids and wannabes that think "that could/should be me". i see rave reviews and support from teens constantly about this game. they're also about the only ones i've seen ever post anything about wow being hard... mere coincedence?
people are addictive beasts by nature. games feed upon said addictions. easy, pretty colors, all the cool kids are doing it...
fundamental laws of mankind.
ignoring 99.71% of your playerbase because YOU like raiding and that is ALL you know how to do, most everything else you ripped off from others (AV = DOTA)?
fundamental laws of the moron formerly known as jazzy jeff kaplan
allowing the idiot to remain in power whilst irking your U.S. base, but gaining tons of ground in the asian markets?
fundamental laws of rob *imma his guild master* pardo
laughing and laughing and laughing at the hype and love/hate/stupidity/inbreds that surround this game (yeah, because i know i'm always all over all those other great asian MMOs)?
absolutely priceless.
now go on and tell us how cool it is to crash a memorial service online, cuz it's your right. thusly proving wow players = POS
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Originally posted by Spathotan The game is going on 2 years old, it cant be expected to be uptop forever. Plus this argument has been recycled time and time again, the raitings on this site mean nothing. Its just a number that represents how the members of this forum feel about the game. Its not a set-in-stone judgement of the game. DaoC has an 8.2, GuildWars is on the list twice, same goes for CoH/V. And EVE has been at the top for ages, that tells you something.
Yep it tells you that people who visit these forums are more interested in games with a tad more depth to them. Games that also have better PvP in them. Speaking as an Ex. WoW player it is barely superficial in most things PvP/Crafting Character Advancement et al, couple this with the fact that they games have more regular updates than WoW (Although issue 7 for COH/COV seemed take forever). Wow originally lanuched with the prospect of new and evolving quest content every month but since a lot of the so called content added in the first year of life (and not at a montly pace) was supposed to be in game at launch it seems thats just another of the marketing gimiks discredited along with Heros and meaningfull PvP.
The first paid expension looks unlikely to be available before the 2 year aniversary the game, plus they still refuse to indicate whether or not Outland will be mandatory PvP on all severs or just PvP classed ones.
Basically i think WoW is getting lower rates because its not a very deep game crafting is pretty basic and most items that can be made can be superceded by far better 'drops' even the epic crafted items (warlocks robe lol). There is no housing, character customization is basic, no real goal for the limited and poor Pvp in game, blizzards approach to development = raid or day , means no alternate method of advancement for non raiders and even the method of advancement raiders have is poor i.e. all gear based , Wow simply put feels more like a super diablo 2 and socketing in Burning Crusade furthers that view.
Simply put people are finally becoming bored, with leveling alts and being forced into specific playstyles because there is not enough variety in the game.
When launched WoW looked like it was going to break the mould which it did, unfortunately its reassemble a china cup into a plastic beaker, the innovation has gone (If sockets dont tell you that (taken from a different game universe than Warcraft)) Now the game is just rehashing old ideas and hoping that people forget about some of the features planned to be in game from late Beta.
I'd like to think that Burning Crusade would add a lot of new things and different ways to acheive progression (enough to tempt me to come back) but everything about burning crusade says more of the same.
Originally posted by damian7 if a game is easy, lots of kids and people that don't normally play that sort of game will play it. the pretty colors, no brainer leveling (your stats are added for you), and basically easy mode (no death penalties, no item loss, et cetera) also add to that. does that mean it's a good product? or does that just mean it's pretty and incredibly easy; BUT, they feel like they can play the games that the *gamers* play?
Good.
I am not an elitist. I don't want to play with "gamers", I want to play with people.
Everybody who plays WoW is a gamer, you prefering a different game experience, in no way makes you superior or your preferences more qualitative.
Most MMO games have plenty of functions available to restrict the player to the type of person you prefer, friends lists, comms channels, clan filters, ignore lists. The last thing I want to do is limit myself to a little clique of intolerants. For me, access to a wide cross section of humanity is a large part of the internets appeal.
I haven't personally found the community in WoW to be any more or less annoying than any other MMO community. First person shooters and PvP games tend to have a community which I noticeably like less.
An online PvP funeral in any MMO is a tasteless and stupid scenario, guarenteed to provoke offense. Do you really believe it would have gone down any different in another PvP game? Human nature is human nature. WoW or any other MMO won't change that.
This thread is still going? Really folks... it's just a damn MMO that overcharges it's players, just like most of the others out there. Get over it for crying out loud
If 7 million people like it who CARES... let them play it if they like it. Does it matter what it's rating on a chart is? Play it... or not.... but this constant bickering about whether it's a good MMO or not is kinda silly. It's obviously a GOOD MMORPG otherwise people wouldn't play it. Especially not 6.5-7million of them.
Is it the "BEST" MMO? THAT is subjective and varies from person to persion. Right now it is certainly the LARGEST MMO, however. Personally I don't like it. In *my* opinion its graphics are horrible, low poly and cartoonish and WAY too noisy. That's MY opinion. Many people like it... some don't. Doesn't really matter though. Play it if you like it. If you don't.... then don't....
People play and enjoy Matrix, Horizons and NGE so um... there's obviously differences in taste
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online. Sig image Pending Still in: A couple Betas
Originally posted by baff I am not an elitist. I don't want to play with "gamers", I want to play with people. Everybody who plays WoW is a gamer, you prefering a different game experience, in no way makes you superior or your preferences more qualitative.
Oh really? That is why WoW created an entire new customer base from non-gamers and people never to the MMO market before? You think they got 6.5 million from just gamers? Have you ever played the game? There is a hell of alot more then just gamers there.
I have met countless PEOPLE in WoW that I would never of met in largely less successful MMO's that mostly only draw on the MMO crowd that everyone is fighting for.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Has WoW brought in a wider audience of players? Maybe.
Considering WoW's reputation and theme is based on a popular brand of computer game, (Blizzard), I think it's fair to imagine that the fanbase were predominantly gamers to start with. After all they are playing "Warcraft" not "The Matrix" or "Star Wars", this game isn't marketed at movie buffs or a crossover audience.
I haven't actually ever spoken to anyone who plays WoW but has not played other computer games. I'm sure there must be some.
And yes I think there are far more than 6.5 million gamers worldwide to draw on. I think there are about 180 million in the U.S. alone. (figures courtesy of ESA). Gaming is a very mainstream hobby.
Originally posted by Celestian Originally posted by Pride7 Originally posted by Celestian Originally posted by Pride7 The #1 Ranked MMO on this site (Eve) is not even in the top 10 in terms of subscribers according to MMOGCHART.com, so that should show you the correlation between this boards ratings and reality.
So you will believe what mmogchart posts but you won't believe whats on a ranking here? Neither are accurate.
My personal opinion on WoW, it gets old, fast and with the slowest development cycle EVER it's not hard to believe. Pretty much the only new content was raid and to raid in WoW you gotta get in a guild that can field 40 people which is about 70 players.
It's to bad, I was hoping the game would be about PvP/RVR at end game but they pretty much ruined that.
You really don't believe Eve is in the top 10 in terms of subscribers, do you? Besides MMOCHART you can reference NPD sales data. Granted unit sales do not equal subscribers but do you really think Eve has more subs than WOW, EQ2, EQ1, FF, SWG, GW, DAoC, CoH & CoV, UO, Lineage, or Lineage 2? Now I am sure the fanbois feel that way but that doesn't make it so... Personally I think AC is the best MMO ever and that isn't even on the list.
I never said I believed the polls/ratings here nor did I say I believed mmogchart. Infact I said why would someone believe mmogchart and not believe the ratings here since both are not accurate.
Read the mmogchart faq, he makes "best guess" when he has no hard data. He has no insider information to all those companies and thus cannot make even remotely accurate accounting. Blizzard for example is very vague at best at their numbers but they would like everyone to think they have 5 million active accounts. Only they know the truth.
Cheers.
Vivendi noted 5 million in their annual report, are you saying they are lying in their 2005 annual report?
Lets compare it to another game whose theme I prefer, Eve online. Eve is technically cutting edge and comparatively low budget. It cannot afford localised servers so there is frequent and noticeable lag. The server loads are run to capacity before upgrading and the stability is very poor. The programming team have limited resources and it is not unheard of for updates to cause server crashing/game breaking bugs that take weeks to rectify.
Despite my enjoyment of Eve and my love for it's theme, it is a lower quality game than WoW, it quite simply doesn't compare.
Whatever else WoW isn't, it is not a low quality product. It has the highest production quality of any MMO I have ever seen. It's not my favourite MMO, but it is the best quality one.
ERRR....WTF are you smoking?
EVE does not have localized servers because of the way it is set up, not because they cannot afford it, the server is located on the internet backbone in London, I get ping times of sub 40 ms and just over 10 hops, I was getting higher pingtimes to the wow servers I was playing (150-300ms). CCP has spent close to 3 million dollars last year upgrading their hardware. I'm fairly confident that's more than all the wow servers put together.
The lag in the game is usually no worse and often quite better than most other MMO's I've played. Stability-wise it's been right up there as well, though downtime is more noticable due to the single-shard setup. When they decided to upgrade the server it took 6 months for IBM to deliver the CUSTOM hardware they needed to upgrade the cluster but once they had it, the initial hardware upgrade was done 6 hours earlier than scheduled and went fairly smoothly. Their db upgrade didn't fare as well. Regardless of what stability problems the game HAS had, they've always taken the time to communicate with the players and explained what happened and why. The WoW dev's community involvement is non-existant in comparison and their customer service is horrid as well as is their track record for buggy patches.
Production value is not a true measurement of quality, it is a component of it.
It's not just your ping times that count. You get 40, but you still have to add the 150 a Californian gets before you get his response to your action.
I'm British too, I get the same pings as you. Eve does lag, and it does lag more than other games.
Custom hardware and server population is part of the excitement of Eve, it's ground breaking networking is a technical feat that appeals to me as I play it. Therein lies the problem. It's experimental and fraught with all the errors you would expect in a constantly revolutionising system. The quality of the game is affected. Explaining to me why my subscription service is giving errors or not available isn't my prefered scenario.
WoW just uses tried and tested kit. It works. They never alter the working system.
I have had no experience of game breaking updates or even bugs in WoW and plenty in Eve at regular weekly periods (Friday is the big bugfix day so if it kills the game, it's borked all weekend). I am not intrested in talking to the developers unless something has gone wrong. They are paid to fix problems before I see them, not harp on to me about their problems. I don't want to talk to the developers unless they are sexy women.
Eve's system is very expensive, they will launch a seperate server in Asia. (Pings are too large?) The systems would all function better if they had a seperate system for North America also. You wll notice that this is standard proceedure for all other network games ever.
If I guesstimtate that WoW runs one server for every 30,000 subscriptions, then WoW has about 200 servers up at anyone time. 1 slot in a Counterstrike server =$5 a month.....$60 a year. 3,500 player per server, 200 servers, so my completely inaccurate guesstimate of WoW's server costs is 42 million a year which is in a very different league to Eve's 3. As we would expect for game supporting 30 times as many players.
WoW sucks. It really does. All it does is favor elitist guilds chock full of lifeless losers who make a video game their prioity in life. Blizzard alienated both the hardcore PvP crowd and the casual gamer. Nothing is worse to log in and see your PvP rank back to zero becasue you couldnt play for 2 weeks. PvP is unbalanced as hell because it was put in as an after thought and the truly lifeless, the ones dcked out in epic and legendary gear gain an extreme advantage over those with green or blue gear in PvP. When 90% of the games end-game content is only available to a small group kiddies and jobless adults the main body of players...the casual gamers who play arounf 8 hours per week...just leave after a while. WHats the point in competing if you have no realistsoc chance of winning once in a while. Its like a game of chess where you are only allowed a King, pawns and 2 rooks againts a guy with a full set.
WoW will die out when the next MMORPGS come out. The onlyl ones left will be the fanboys who fear true competitiion.
Originally posted by Pride7 You really don't believe Eve is in the top 10 in terms of subscribers, do you? Besides MMOCHART you can reference NPD sales data. Granted unit sales do not equal subscribers but do you really think Eve has more subs than WOW, EQ2, EQ1, FF, SWG, GW, DAoC, CoH & CoV, UO, Lineage, or Lineage 2? Now I am sure the fanbois feel that way but that doesn't make it so... Personally I think AC is the best MMO ever and that isn't even on the list.
I never said I believed the polls/ratings here nor did I say I believed mmogchart. Infact I said why would someone believe mmogchart and not believe the ratings here since both are not accurate.
Read the mmogchart faq, he makes "best guess" when he has no hard data. He has no insider information to all those companies and thus cannot make even remotely accurate accounting. Blizzard for example is very vague at best at their numbers but they would like everyone to think they have 5 million active accounts. Only they know the truth.
Cheers.
Vivendi noted 5 million in their annual report, are you saying they are lying in their 2005 annual report? Units sold is not active accounts, they have never said how many active accounts they have. Also is that sold to stores like Best Biuy/Walmart or to customers?
His site is no more "accurate" than the rankings/polls here.
Originally posted by Celestian Originally posted by Pride7 You really don't believe Eve is in the top 10 in terms of subscribers, do you? Besides MMOCHART you can reference NPD sales data. Granted unit sales do not equal subscribers but do you really think Eve has more subs than WOW, EQ2, EQ1, FF, SWG, GW, DAoC, CoH & CoV, UO, Lineage, or Lineage 2? Now I am sure the fanbois feel that way but that doesn't make it so... Personally I think AC is the best MMO ever and that isn't even on the list.
I never said I believed the polls/ratings here nor did I say I believed mmogchart. Infact I said why would someone believe mmogchart and not believe the ratings here since both are not accurate.
Read the mmogchart faq, he makes "best guess" when he has no hard data. He has no insider information to all those companies and thus cannot make even remotely accurate accounting. Blizzard for example is very vague at best at their numbers but they would like everyone to think they have 5 million active accounts. Only they know the truth.
Cheers.
Vivendi noted 5 million in their annual report, are you saying they are lying in their 2005 annual report? Units sold is not active accounts, they have never said how many active accounts they have. Also is that sold to stores like Best Biuy/Walmart or to customers?
His site is no more "accurate" than the rankings/polls here.
Not really. I clearly remember reading on the official World of Warcraft site that WoW hit 5 million PLAYERS. Players are ALWAYS seen as subscribers.
i've read a lot in this thread. most of it fanboi nonsense (even by people who claim they aren't fanbois, but raise that flag like it was the messiah's second coming).
one part talks about wow servers, compares it to eve servers, talks about lag in eve. the lag in eve, on average, is far far less than the lag i've seen in wow (even now, the wife still plays on occasion, just to have something to do and say "i now have 25 lvl 60s" or whatever). eve doesn't have a queue. wow has queues so THAT you don't have lag. queue begins = max number of people on server that you can play without worrying about lag. yeah, WRONG. i'm in Louisiana, in the good ole U.S. of A.. so you'd think eve would be a lot worse than wow in lag, yeah, you'd be wrong. kind of like fanbois, always wrong it seems.
why are people so rabid in defending a raid zerg fest? especially after the comments made by jazzy jeff kaplan? i just honestly don't get it. what is wrong with you people?
the game is pretty, that's about it.
you have no customization, you have no losses ever, you have nothing to call home, you have gold farmers out the yingyang.
yet, all i read is "zomgwtfbbqpewpewpew it's got bazillions of boxes sold, hottest thing in asia, 4 million subs in asia, 6.5 million worldwide". that's great. go play it. if you're not playing it, why are you going on about how great it is? do you also go to music sites and rant about how wonderful all the american idols are? what about a food site? do you hit those to talk about the billions sold/served by burger king and mcdonalds? i don't need no stinking steak, gimme that pressed pseudo-meat~!!
part of the reason, as stated before, that people can't stand it is that it's so bloody easy that 8 year olds can (and do) play it. that is WHY you can go to the barrens and just see people spamming constantly "oh how do i complete this quest?? it says go to the pool and check out the bubbles. i'm at the pool. i dunno what to do help meeeeeeee." yes, you didn't go anywhere near the little bubbles, because you are actually that stupid. wow. i'm not calling 8 year olds stupid, i seriously doubt one 8 year old has asked that question that i've noticed. but a lot of people who think they're now "gamers" are asking those questions.
no, they're playing a game, they're not gamers. they're playing a game that has no one with any creativity driving it. again i'll point out AV.... the first and biggest BG... it is a total and complete rip-off of the player created wc3 mod - DOTA (defense of the ancients).
that's why people hate it. it dummies everything down. there's no variety. it's super easy to play BUT then you hit max level and for some reason NOW you're expected to spend the rest of your life farming an instance with a bunch of morons for 500 hours, and then on to the next instance for another 500 hours of farming.
this is where i say zomgwtfbbqpewpewpew~!!!!!!
let them keep selling. keep the bottom feeders in this game, please god. let people release new and challenging games and improve upon the ones out already.
that's it for me. morons will continue to say "hey, hamburgers are WAY better than your steak cuz 5 bazllion people buy them -- look, they're the best seller~!!" eat your burgers and stfu.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Originally posted by Celestian Units sold is not active accounts, they have never said how many active accounts they have. Also is that sold to stores like Best Biuy/Walmart or to customers?
His site is no more "accurate" than the rankings/polls here.
The number of boxes sold is not given out. The numbers you see published for WoW are for active subscribers only.
6.5 million active subscribers worldwide.
I have no idea how many boxes have been sold, although I do know they broke Halo 2's previous record for the fastest selling video game of all time. So that's over 900,000 on the first day in the U.S.
Damian you wonder why no one listens to you? Just look at your post. I have no idea why you are under the impression. That just because "you" don't like world of warcraft. It automatically makes it a bad game. You can keep repeating it all you like, but still doesn't change the fact that it's your opinion. Which no matter how much you repeat it, will never make it a fact. The idea that you seem to hate WoW, so much is frankly scary. I think you are in some serious need of "time away" from gaming. Disliking or even hating a game is fine, but this little anti-wow crusade you seem to be on, makes me seriously wonder if something is mentally wrong with you.
In War - Victory. In Peace - Vigilance. In Death - Sacrifice.
Originally posted by damian7 i've read a lot in this thread. most of it fanboi nonsense (even by people who claim they aren't fanbois, but raise that flag like it was the messiah's second coming).
one part talks about wow servers, compares it to eve servers, talks about lag in eve. the lag in eve, on average, is far far less than the lag i've seen in wow (even now, the wife still plays on occasion, just to have something to do and say "i now have 25 lvl 60s" or whatever). eve doesn't have a queue. wow has queues so THAT you don't have lag. queue begins = max number of people on server that you can play without worrying about lag. yeah, WRONG. i'm in Louisiana, in the good ole U.S. of A.. so you'd think eve would be a lot worse than wow in lag, yeah, you'd be wrong. kind of like fanbois, always wrong it seems.
why are people so rabid in defending a raid zerg fest? especially after the comments made by jazzy jeff kaplan? i just honestly don't get it. what is wrong with you people?
the game is pretty, that's about it.
you have no customization, you have no losses ever, you have nothing to call home, you have gold farmers out the yingyang.
yet, all i read is "zomgwtfbbqpewpewpew it's got bazillions of boxes sold, hottest thing in asia, 4 million subs in asia, 6.5 million worldwide". that's great. go play it. if you're not playing it, why are you going on about how great it is? do you also go to music sites and rant about how wonderful all the american idols are? what about a food site? do you hit those to talk about the billions sold/served by burger king and mcdonalds? i don't need no stinking steak, gimme that pressed pseudo-meat~!!
part of the reason, as stated before, that people can't stand it is that it's so bloody easy that 8 year olds can (and do) play it. that is WHY you can go to the barrens and just see people spamming constantly "oh how do i complete this quest?? it says go to the pool and check out the bubbles. i'm at the pool. i dunno what to do help meeeeeeee." yes, you didn't go anywhere near the little bubbles, because you are actually that stupid. wow. i'm not calling 8 year olds stupid, i seriously doubt one 8 year old has asked that question that i've noticed. but a lot of people who think they're now "gamers" are asking those questions.
no, they're playing a game, they're not gamers. they're playing a game that has no one with any creativity driving it. again i'll point out AV.... the first and biggest BG... it is a total and complete rip-off of the player created wc3 mod - DOTA (defense of the ancients).
that's why people hate it. it dummies everything down. there's no variety. it's super easy to play BUT then you hit max level and for some reason NOW you're expected to spend the rest of your life farming an instance with a bunch of morons for 500 hours, and then on to the next instance for another 500 hours of farming.
this is where i say zomgwtfbbqpewpewpew~!!!!!!
let them keep selling. keep the bottom feeders in this game, please god. let people release new and challenging games and improve upon the ones out already.
that's it for me. morons will continue to say "hey, hamburgers are WAY better than your steak cuz 5 bazllion people buy them -- look, they're the best seller~!!" eat your burgers and stfu.
Originally posted by baff It's not just your ping times that count. You get 40, but you still have to add the 150 a Californian gets before you get his response to your action. I'm British too, I get the same pings as you. Eve does lag, and it does lag more than other games.
Custom hardware and server population is part of the excitement of Eve, it's ground breaking networking is a technical feat that appeals to me as I play it. Therein lies the problem. It's experimental and fraught with all the errors you would expect in a constantly revolutionising system. The quality of the game is affected. Explaining to me why my subscription service is giving errors or not available isn't my prefered scenario. WoW just uses tried and tested kit. It works. They never alter the working system. I have had no experience of game breaking updates or even bugs in WoW and plenty in Eve at regular weekly periods (Friday is the big bugfix day so if it kills the game, it's borked all weekend). I am not intrested in talking to the developers unless something has gone wrong. They are paid to fix problems before I see them, not harp on to me about their problems. I don't want to talk to the developers unless they are sexy women. Eve's system is very expensive, they will launch a seperate server in Asia. (Pings are too large?) The systems would all function better if they had a seperate system for North America also. You wll notice that this is standard proceedure for all other network games ever. If I guesstimtate that WoW runs one server for every 30,000 subscriptions, then WoW has about 200 servers up at anyone time. 1 slot in a Counterstrike server =$5 a month.....$60 a year. 3,500 player per server, 200 servers, so my completely inaccurate guesstimate of WoW's server costs is 42 million a year which is in a very different league to Eve's 3. As we would expect for game supporting 30 times as many players.
I REALLY have to question whether you actually play the game now. First of all CCP NEVER patches on a friday....EVER, because of the very fact you stated. As for them telling their players what happened and why instead of just being silent and letting the players complain (i.e. WoW). Most people would appreciate that but I guess for some ignorance is bliss.
If you are from britain then you're likely playing on the EU servers, and since patches come out later on those servers than NA ones you get to miss the mass server crashes and other problems that are a regular occurance on patch day for WoW. And the developers don't harp, they explain what the problem was and how/what they did to fix it, far more than you get from other MMO devs.
The China server is being opened as a separate server due to Chinese laws and restrictions more than ping, as with most MMO's, anything below 300ms ping is more than adequate to play with. This is why it is still possible to play most MMO's on a dial-up connection (~300ms ping) but very hard to play on satellite (~1500ms ping).
Your guesstimate is off by quite a bit. Each individual WoW 'Realm' is not a separate set of hardware, in fact 2-3 'Realms' are often hosted on 1 server cluster, they all share equipment like the actual realm servers, the instance servers, character database server, etc. This is why WoW servers are always brought down in groups, as taking 1 'Realm' down results in taking down the whole group of them. Your bandwidth costs are off by quite a bit as well. A game like CS transfers at least 100x the data back and forth than any MMO does.
Comments
This whole topic is a moot point. Blizzard doesn't release official numbers for this very reason: to support any propaganda it wants to, one way or the other.
I've seen absolutely no substantial evidence for either argument, that WOW is starting to sag a bit, or that it's as strong as ever (or more). All I see are people hurling dubious sources and insults at one another.
Well, ya'll carry on. I quit playing the game, and I can be patient to see how things tumble out in the end.
And without acting like a little monster in the process, too.
My personal opinion on WoW, it gets old, fast and with the slowest development cycle EVER it's not hard to believe. Pretty much the only new content was raid and to raid in WoW you gotta get in a guild that can field 40 people which is about 70 players.
It's to bad, I was hoping the game would be about PvP/RVR at end game but they pretty much ruined that.
You really don't believe Eve is in the top 10 in terms of subscribers, do you? Besides MMOCHART you can reference NPD sales data. Granted unit sales do not equal subscribers but do you really think Eve has more subs than WOW, EQ2, EQ1, FF, SWG, GW, DAoC, CoH & CoV, UO, Lineage, or Lineage 2? Now I am sure the fanbois feel that way but that doesn't make it so... Personally I think AC is the best MMO ever and that isn't even on the list.
I never said I believed the polls/ratings here nor did I say I believed mmogchart. Infact I said why would someone believe mmogchart and not believe the ratings here since both are not accurate.
Read the mmogchart faq, he makes "best guess" when he has no hard data. He has no insider information to all those companies and thus cannot make even remotely accurate accounting. Blizzard for example is very vague at best at their numbers but they would like everyone to think they have 5 million active accounts. Only they know the truth.
Cheers.
http://www.greycouncil.org/
If 2 years ago a company had made an identical game to WoW in every aspect and had named it <GenericMMOGName> noone would be wondering why on earth it's at 6.0 at mmorpg.com now.
WoW is a mediocre game that had 1 thing and 1 thing only in it's favor: The Blizzard tag.
I have to agree with the person that said that Blizzard fanbois make the worst type of Blizzard Haters. I used to be a huge Blizzard fanboi, but then blizzard made Warcraft III and WoW. Withing record time, blizzard had gone from making innovative and balanced games to generic mainstream boring games, that if produced by any other label wouldn't never cut it on the market.
Never underestimate what the label does for a product and never forget that quantity never denoted quality.
Noone can dispute that WoW is on the top concerning sales. The same way that noone can dispute that EVE has been on longer than WoW and hasn't dropped an inch in ratings.
It's just pointless arguing over those 2 values... if you really want to compare you should be looking into yearly percentile increase of subscribers and retention rates.
WoW is a good game.. not a great game. It has been well done but has nothing interesting in its gameplay. If Blizzard have made Dark and Light, DnL would be a great game cause Blizzard know what ppl want.
For 80 - 90% of its actual players, WoW is the first - and only - MMO. For the other 10 - 20% WoW is simply the newest good game or the one with more pve content.
With the coming MMOs like Age of Conan and of course WAR, the WoW ranking going down cause ppl are more focused on the new comers.
1. # players - take the number of players on the server you are playing and you get a more relevant figure. The amount of people that play on the same server is what counts.
2. Profits - only really matter for the future. Says nothing about the quality of the game.
WoW may be the best MMORPG for those looking for a simple MMORPG with plenty of grind and powergaming. As a more mature MMORPG player I tend to look for more depth and a true virtual world to get immersed in. WoW is more like a multiplayer game.
Where "never" = usually.
If a product is poor quality, many people do not buy it. Word gets around.
If a product is good value, or high quality, many people are willing to buy it, word gets around.
Fundamental laws of marketing.
.
Laws of engineering.....
The more you produce, the better your design becomes. With each production cycle, refinements to the process are made.
Profits/profitablilty does not define the quality of a game, nor for the end user, the success of it.
However it is symptomatic of a good product to also be profitable.
For a product such as an MMO where population life is a factor, regular sales is a key element in the games quality and success. An MMO that is not profitable will fail. An MMO that is less profitable will recieve less investment. Cheaper expansions, lesser updates, less servers.
In WoW, my servers are similar in population to my servers in COH, but WoW's content is bigger and expanding faster. When a WoW server reaches capacity a new one is instantly added, while in COH they fudge a second Atlas Park onto the same server.
They have more support staff, in COH when I ask for tech support, I am refused. In WoW, my billing webpage is personally customised as per my feedback request, without even specific request.
I prefer COH, I enjoy the game more, it's a quality game and the theme is one I enjoy. But WoW is a higher quality game. It os a very good game, but because of it's budget it can achieve higher production values. And does.
Lets compare it to another game whose theme I prefer, Eve online. Eve is technically cutting edge and comparatively low budget. It cannot afford localised servers so there is frequent and noticeable lag. The server loads are run to capacity before upgrading and the stability is very poor. The programming team have limited resources and it is not unheard of for updates to cause server crashing/game breaking bugs that take weeks to rectify.
Despite my enjoyment of Eve and my love for it's theme, it is a lower quality game than WoW, it quite simply doesn't compare.
Whatever else WoW isn't, it is not a low quality product. It has the highest production quality of any MMO I have ever seen. It's not my favourite MMO, but it is the best quality one.
Where "never" = usually.
If a product is poor quality, many people do not buy it. Word gets around.
If a product is good value, or high quality, many people are willing to buy it, word gets around.
Fundamental laws of marketing.
.
Laws of engineering.....
The more you produce, the better your design becomes. With each production cycle, refinements to the process are made.
if a game is easy, lots of kids and people that don't normally play that sort of game will play it. the pretty colors, no brainer leveling (your stats are added for you), and basically easy mode (no death penalties, no item loss, et cetera) also add to that. does that mean it's a good product? or does that just mean it's pretty and incredibly easy; BUT, they feel like they can play the games that the *gamers* play?
not sure what your thing has to do with quantity doesn't equal quality, but hey, most of your posts don't make much sense.
the initial wow onslaught, no matter what morons claim, was from wc/sc/d2/b.net fans.
american idol and backstreet boys and britney spears were/are all good value and high quality? lemmings, and kids and wannabes that think "that could/should be me". i see rave reviews and support from teens constantly about this game. they're also about the only ones i've seen ever post anything about wow being hard... mere coincedence?
people are addictive beasts by nature. games feed upon said addictions. easy, pretty colors, all the cool kids are doing it...
fundamental laws of mankind.
ignoring 99.71% of your playerbase because YOU like raiding and that is ALL you know how to do, most everything else you ripped off from others (AV = DOTA)?
fundamental laws of the moron formerly known as jazzy jeff kaplan
allowing the idiot to remain in power whilst irking your U.S. base, but gaining tons of ground in the asian markets?
fundamental laws of rob *imma his guild master* pardo
laughing and laughing and laughing at the hype and love/hate/stupidity/inbreds that surround this game (yeah, because i know i'm always all over all those other great asian MMOs)?
absolutely priceless.
now go on and tell us how cool it is to crash a memorial service online, cuz it's your right. thusly proving wow players = POS
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
The first paid expension looks unlikely to be available before the 2 year aniversary the game, plus they still refuse to indicate whether or not Outland will be mandatory PvP on all severs or just PvP classed ones.
Basically i think WoW is getting lower rates because its not a very deep game crafting is pretty basic and most items that can be made can be superceded by far better 'drops' even the epic crafted items (warlocks robe lol). There is no housing, character customization is basic, no real goal for the limited and poor Pvp in game, blizzards approach to development = raid or day , means no alternate method of advancement for non raiders and even the method of advancement raiders have is poor i.e. all gear based , Wow simply put feels more like a super diablo 2 and socketing in Burning Crusade furthers that view.
Simply put people are finally becoming bored, with leveling alts and being forced into specific playstyles because there is not enough variety in the game.
When launched WoW looked like it was going to break the mould which it did, unfortunately its reassemble a china cup into a plastic beaker, the innovation has gone (If sockets dont tell you that (taken from a different game universe than Warcraft)) Now the game is just rehashing old ideas and hoping that people forget about some of the features planned to be in game from late Beta.
I'd like to think that Burning Crusade would add a lot of new things and different ways to acheive progression (enough to tempt me to come back) but everything about burning crusade says more of the same.
I am not an elitist. I don't want to play with "gamers", I want to play with people.
Everybody who plays WoW is a gamer, you prefering a different game experience, in no way makes you superior or your preferences more qualitative.
Most MMO games have plenty of functions available to restrict the player to the type of person you prefer, friends lists, comms channels, clan filters, ignore lists. The last thing I want to do is limit myself to a little clique of intolerants. For me, access to a wide cross section of humanity is a large part of the internets appeal.
I haven't personally found the community in WoW to be any more or less annoying than any other MMO community. First person shooters and PvP games tend to have a community which I noticeably like less.
An online PvP funeral in any MMO is a tasteless and stupid scenario, guarenteed to provoke offense. Do you really believe it would have gone down any different in another PvP game? Human nature is human nature. WoW or any other MMO won't change that.
This thread is still going?
Really folks... it's just a damn MMO that overcharges it's players, just like most of the others out there. Get over it for crying out loud
If 7 million people like it who CARES... let them play it if they like it. Does it matter what it's rating on a chart is? Play it... or not.... but this constant bickering about whether it's a good MMO or not is kinda silly. It's obviously a GOOD MMORPG otherwise people wouldn't play it. Especially not 6.5-7million of them.
Is it the "BEST" MMO? THAT is subjective and varies from person to persion. Right now it is certainly the LARGEST MMO, however. Personally I don't like it. In *my* opinion its graphics are horrible, low poly and cartoonish and WAY too noisy. That's MY opinion. Many people like it... some don't. Doesn't really matter though. Play it if you like it. If you don't.... then don't....
People play and enjoy Matrix, Horizons and NGE so um... there's obviously differences in taste
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Oh really? That is why WoW created an entire new customer base from non-gamers and people never to the MMO market before? You think they got 6.5 million from just gamers? Have you ever played the game? There is a hell of alot more then just gamers there.
I have met countless PEOPLE in WoW that I would never of met in largely less successful MMO's that mostly only draw on the MMO crowd that everyone is fighting for.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
If they are playing games, they are gamers.
Has WoW brought in a wider audience of players? Maybe.
Considering WoW's reputation and theme is based on a popular brand of computer game, (Blizzard), I think it's fair to imagine that the fanbase were predominantly gamers to start with. After all they are playing "Warcraft" not "The Matrix" or "Star Wars", this game isn't marketed at movie buffs or a crossover audience.
I haven't actually ever spoken to anyone who plays WoW but has not played other computer games. I'm sure there must be some.
And yes I think there are far more than 6.5 million gamers worldwide to draw on. I think there are about 180 million in the U.S. alone. (figures courtesy of ESA). Gaming is a very mainstream hobby.
My personal opinion on WoW, it gets old, fast and with the slowest development cycle EVER it's not hard to believe. Pretty much the only new content was raid and to raid in WoW you gotta get in a guild that can field 40 people which is about 70 players.
It's to bad, I was hoping the game would be about PvP/RVR at end game but they pretty much ruined that.
You really don't believe Eve is in the top 10 in terms of subscribers, do you? Besides MMOCHART you can reference NPD sales data. Granted unit sales do not equal subscribers but do you really think Eve has more subs than WOW, EQ2, EQ1, FF, SWG, GW, DAoC, CoH & CoV, UO, Lineage, or Lineage 2? Now I am sure the fanbois feel that way but that doesn't make it so... Personally I think AC is the best MMO ever and that isn't even on the list.
I never said I believed the polls/ratings here nor did I say I believed mmogchart. Infact I said why would someone believe mmogchart and not believe the ratings here since both are not accurate.
Read the mmogchart faq, he makes "best guess" when he has no hard data. He has no insider information to all those companies and thus cannot make even remotely accurate accounting. Blizzard for example is very vague at best at their numbers but they would like everyone to think they have 5 million active accounts. Only they know the truth.
Cheers.
Vivendi noted 5 million in their annual report, are you saying they are lying in their 2005 annual report?
EVE does not have localized servers because of the way it is set up, not because they cannot afford it, the server is located on the internet backbone in London, I get ping times of sub 40 ms and just over 10 hops, I was getting higher pingtimes to the wow servers I was playing (150-300ms). CCP has spent close to 3 million dollars last year upgrading their hardware. I'm fairly confident that's more than all the wow servers put together.
The lag in the game is usually no worse and often quite better than most other MMO's I've played. Stability-wise it's been right up there as well, though downtime is more noticable due to the single-shard setup. When they decided to upgrade the server it took 6 months for IBM to deliver the CUSTOM hardware they needed to upgrade the cluster but once they had it, the initial hardware upgrade was done 6 hours earlier than scheduled and went fairly smoothly. Their db upgrade didn't fare as well. Regardless of what stability problems the game HAS had, they've always taken the time to communicate with the players and explained what happened and why. The WoW dev's community involvement is non-existant in comparison and their customer service is horrid as well as is their track record for buggy patches.
Production value is not a true measurement of quality, it is a component of it.
It's not just your ping times that count. You get 40, but you still have to add the 150 a Californian gets before you get his response to your action.
I'm British too, I get the same pings as you. Eve does lag, and it does lag more than other games.
Custom hardware and server population is part of the excitement of Eve, it's ground breaking networking is a technical feat that appeals to me as I play it. Therein lies the problem. It's experimental and fraught with all the errors you would expect in a constantly revolutionising system. The quality of the game is affected. Explaining to me why my subscription service is giving errors or not available isn't my prefered scenario.
WoW just uses tried and tested kit. It works. They never alter the working system.
I have had no experience of game breaking updates or even bugs in WoW and plenty in Eve at regular weekly periods (Friday is the big bugfix day so if it kills the game, it's borked all weekend). I am not intrested in talking to the developers unless something has gone wrong. They are paid to fix problems before I see them, not harp on to me about their problems. I don't want to talk to the developers unless they are sexy women.
Eve's system is very expensive, they will launch a seperate server in Asia. (Pings are too large?) The systems would all function better if they had a seperate system for North America also. You wll notice that this is standard proceedure for all other network games ever.
If I guesstimtate that WoW runs one server for every 30,000 subscriptions, then WoW has about 200 servers up at anyone time. 1 slot in a Counterstrike server =$5 a month.....$60 a year. 3,500 player per server, 200 servers, so my completely inaccurate guesstimate of WoW's server costs is 42 million a year which is in a very different league to Eve's 3. As we would expect for game supporting 30 times as many players.
WoW will die out when the next MMORPGS come out. The onlyl ones left will be the fanboys who fear true competitiion.
Read the mmogchart faq, he makes "best guess" when he has no hard data. He has no insider information to all those companies and thus cannot make even remotely accurate accounting. Blizzard for example is very vague at best at their numbers but they would like everyone to think they have 5 million active accounts. Only they know the truth.
Cheers.
Vivendi noted 5 million in their annual report, are you saying they are lying in their 2005 annual report?
Units sold is not active accounts, they have never said how many active accounts they have. Also is that sold to stores like Best Biuy/Walmart or to customers?
His site is no more "accurate" than the rankings/polls here.
http://www.greycouncil.org/
Read the mmogchart faq, he makes "best guess" when he has no hard data. He has no insider information to all those companies and thus cannot make even remotely accurate accounting. Blizzard for example is very vague at best at their numbers but they would like everyone to think they have 5 million active accounts. Only they know the truth.
Cheers.
Vivendi noted 5 million in their annual report, are you saying they are lying in their 2005 annual report?
Units sold is not active accounts, they have never said how many active accounts they have. Also is that sold to stores like Best Biuy/Walmart or to customers?
His site is no more "accurate" than the rankings/polls here.
Not really. I clearly remember reading on the official World of Warcraft site that WoW hit 5 million PLAYERS. Players are ALWAYS seen as subscribers.
one part talks about wow servers, compares it to eve servers, talks about lag in eve. the lag in eve, on average, is far far less than the lag i've seen in wow (even now, the wife still plays on occasion, just to have something to do and say "i now have 25 lvl 60s" or whatever). eve doesn't have a queue. wow has queues so THAT you don't have lag. queue begins = max number of people on server that you can play without worrying about lag. yeah, WRONG. i'm in Louisiana, in the good ole U.S. of A.. so you'd think eve would be a lot worse than wow in lag, yeah, you'd be wrong. kind of like fanbois, always wrong it seems.
why are people so rabid in defending a raid zerg fest? especially after the comments made by jazzy jeff kaplan? i just honestly don't get it. what is wrong with you people?
the game is pretty, that's about it.
you have no customization, you have no losses ever, you have nothing to call home, you have gold farmers out the yingyang.
yet, all i read is "zomgwtfbbqpewpewpew it's got bazillions of boxes sold, hottest thing in asia, 4 million subs in asia, 6.5 million worldwide". that's great. go play it. if you're not playing it, why are you going on about how great it is? do you also go to music sites and rant about how wonderful all the american idols are? what about a food site? do you hit those to talk about the billions sold/served by burger king and mcdonalds? i don't need no stinking steak, gimme that pressed pseudo-meat~!!
part of the reason, as stated before, that people can't stand it is that it's so bloody easy that 8 year olds can (and do) play it. that is WHY you can go to the barrens and just see people spamming constantly "oh how do i complete this quest?? it says go to the pool and check out the bubbles. i'm at the pool. i dunno what to do help meeeeeeee." yes, you didn't go anywhere near the little bubbles, because you are actually that stupid. wow. i'm not calling 8 year olds stupid, i seriously doubt one 8 year old has asked that question that i've noticed. but a lot of people who think they're now "gamers" are asking those questions.
no, they're playing a game, they're not gamers. they're playing a game that has no one with any creativity driving it. again i'll point out AV.... the first and biggest BG... it is a total and complete rip-off of the player created wc3 mod - DOTA (defense of the ancients).
that's why people hate it. it dummies everything down. there's no variety. it's super easy to play BUT then you hit max level and for some reason NOW you're expected to spend the rest of your life farming an instance with a bunch of morons for 500 hours, and then on to the next instance for another 500 hours of farming.
this is where i say zomgwtfbbqpewpewpew~!!!!!!
let them keep selling. keep the bottom feeders in this game, please god. let people release new and challenging games and improve upon the ones out already.
that's it for me. morons will continue to say "hey, hamburgers are WAY better than your steak cuz 5 bazllion people buy them -- look, they're the best seller~!!" eat your burgers and stfu.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Lol, Damian you have that much hate for the game you call your own wife a 'bottom feeder'?
Ico
Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
The number of boxes sold is not given out.
The numbers you see published for WoW are for active subscribers only.
6.5 million active subscribers worldwide.
I have no idea how many boxes have been sold, although I do know they broke Halo 2's previous record for the fastest selling video game of all time. So that's over 900,000 on the first day in the U.S.
In War - Victory.
In Peace - Vigilance.
In Death - Sacrifice.
If you are from britain then you're likely playing on the EU servers, and since patches come out later on those servers than NA ones you get to miss the mass server crashes and other problems that are a regular occurance on patch day for WoW. And the developers don't harp, they explain what the problem was and how/what they did to fix it, far more than you get from other MMO devs.
The China server is being opened as a separate server due to Chinese laws and restrictions more than ping, as with most MMO's, anything below 300ms ping is more than adequate to play with. This is why it is still possible to play most MMO's on a dial-up connection (~300ms ping) but very hard to play on satellite (~1500ms ping).
Your guesstimate is off by quite a bit. Each individual WoW 'Realm' is not a separate set of hardware, in fact 2-3 'Realms' are often hosted on 1 server cluster, they all share equipment like the actual realm servers, the instance servers, character database server, etc. This is why WoW servers are always brought down in groups, as taking 1 'Realm' down results in taking down the whole group of them. Your bandwidth costs are off by quite a bit as well. A game like CS transfers at least 100x the data back and forth than any MMO does.