Don't forget that the subscription numbers are inflated due to the increase in gold farmers. They are getting bolder advertising in chat channels and ingame mail, they knew with new expansion would create more demand for gold, items, etc. So of these 8+ million subs I'm pretty sure 1/4 of those aren't players but Gold Farmer dot Com. With games that have "only" 100-300k subs, the secondary market is hardly noticeable. With WoW's vastly larger sub numbers it is much easier to see these people doing their "black market" work.
So you're sure that 2 million WoW players are gold farmers?
Does it seriously matter at all? With a few million in the US with another few million in EU and double that in Asia, does it make any different if 100k leave? 200K leave? MMORPGs naturally lose subscribers after a year and normally gain them every time an expansion hits. TBC alone still sold more units than most MMORPGs have total subscribers, combined. Leave Korean cafe MMORPGs out of it;) They seriously don't even count and have zero viablity outside that region. We're talking worldwide numbers.
Does all of this make any difference as to the sucess of popularity of WOW? Not in the slightest. This isn't like most MMORPGs where losing a few 1000 people means shutting down entire servers. WOW will be just like every other great MMORPG. It will slowly die out over a long period of time. If UO could survive this long with a few 1000 players still hanging on, it'll take a while to lose millions. Does it make WOW any less of a MMORPG? Hell no. Its still the pinacle acheivement in the genre.
Originally posted by Volkmar Yes, sales do not tell you subs are rising because more people could be quitting, but sure as hell is more DIRECTLY linked to it than stock price.. that can fluctuate a lot and it is not linked to Blizzard nor to WoW. Fact is they got .5 millions more subs since launch of the BC. that is BEFORE the expansion is released in China and other asian territories, so those .5 mils come straight from the US/EU territory (ok, they don't have to, but I would bet most do). pretty impressive I dare say. As for the expansion, 7 huge areas, several new instances, new world pvp options, bombing runs, etc. Name one free patch that gave even 25% of all this stuff. Yes, no new classes, can we stop on this already? we knew the "no new classes" part since 6 months before the release of BC, no need to repeat it all the time like a broken record, now is there? Fact is BC is much much bigger than many other expansions of other games (all EQ2 expansions for example). Fact is you didn't like WoW before, you won't like it now, but if you DID like it, then now you will like it even more. Personally I'm enjoying the new content and, as it always was, if you are gonna burn trough it, you will not have as much fun as you could. But then you will realize you actually have seen less than 50% of the stuff, exactly because you burned trough it. To each its own, i say.
Actually i thourghly enjoyed WoW when it was a lvl 60 level cap and ironforge was still the place to be.
Bombing runs is a novelty act, and world pvp is nothing new, they just added in an objective, tons of other games have world pvp centered around an objective, such as SWG and RF Online.
Yes, the new areas are great I really did enjoy a few of them, but thats all that was new, a few different landscapes and a few new charecter/npc/monster designs, not too too much tho... and most of the new monster designs were in the hellfire peninsula... curious.
Also, the BC was not that much larger then tons of other games. SWG always did a good job at the size and stuff they'd put in in they're expansions, you wouldnt get a "whole new 7 areas" but an entire new plannet with creatures local to only those places. you wouldnt see them anywhere else (please dont bring up anything about SOE). Another prime example is look at the expansion pack to City Of Heroes, not only was it an expansion but it could be a complete stand alone package thats how much they put in there.
WoW was good, and yes, believe it or not the expansion didnt add anything different from what was already there. thats why everyone has been so disapointed by it.
"And after blizzard takes over the world, they are gonna gather a bunch of lemmings, sit on their fat asses near a cliff, and watch the little fuzzy bastards suicide dive into the ground below. . . . . all just for their own entertainment."
Originally posted by Sunrider WoW was good, and yes, believe it or not the expansion didnt add anything different from what was already there. thats why everyone has been so disapointed by it.
If flying mounts, loads of new dungeons, a bunch of new zones to explore, viable or nearly equal gear for almost any playstyle, entire open PvP areas with objectives, new races, new talents, new mobs, new arenas, a new BG, new cities, and loads of little easter eggs as NOTHING new...to each his own. As to EVERYONE being dissapointed, a few vocal people on message boards equals a blip on the radar. Unless millions of people start quitting so 1/2 the US servers have to shut down or merge, WOW is doing as good as ever. Its only nothing new for all the vocal whiners who hated WOW before, yet still keep playing;)
interestingly, last year I did a project for my MBA course on industry analysis of Online Gaming. Which of course included WoW. So here is the conclusion (with factual support) that will shine some light on some of the assumptions people are making.
1) As of 2005, there are about 10 million MMO players in the US. This include all MMO genres, not only the RPG titles. Don't forget the ever so popular Sims attract quite a crowd too among female players.
2) Blizzard states all accounts are Active, paid accounts.
IRVINE, Calif. – January 11, 2007 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft®, its subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), is now played by more than 8 million gamers around the world. World of Warcraft has also achieved new regional subscriber milestones, with more than 2 million players in North America, more than 1.5 million players in Europe, and more than 3.5 million players in China.
This is taken from blizzard's press release archive. Meaning 1 in 5 players in US plays WoW.
3) Vivendi Universal is a french media conglomerate which includes many media corporations within it's portfolio, and assuming the 8 x 10^6 * $50 initial sale + 8 x 10^6 * $13 monthly sub (using 13 as average) * 6 = 1 billion +, obviously, those numbers are a rough estimate, but even at 2 billion (assuming they have doubled the sales), vivendi universal have market capitalization (total worth in stocks) $60 billion as of 1999. And the 2 billion is revenue, not profit. Blizzard's games have no major effect on stock prices what so ever. AND prices do NOT normally go up before companies announce something, prices go up if the EXPECTED outcome exceeds expert estimates (check finance.yahoo.com to see some estimates), if the EXPECTED news will be that profit will be under expert estimates, stock prices WILL drop. But it also will depend on how investors see long term outcomes.
4) It is skewed to assume number of players are dropping based on what you read on the internet or hear from people. Because the people who have strong hatred tend to voice their thoughts thus making them more active on forums like this one. The content players will not spend their time writing on these forums; that's why you see mostly people who love or hate this game, but not a lot in the middle.
5) The best source to find out whether or not player base for WOW has been expanding is blizzard's press release. Keep in mind a couple of things. Warcraft I, human and orcs has sold 8 million copies to-date. And many people may hate this game, but Diablo 2 was very similar. The end game was endless pindle and meph runs for items. Which is what people do in WoW at end games. But it's the greed (that's right, greed!) that keeps people hooked, not the game itself. See how many people will play if all the items are either free or erased from game.
How did you account for the number of MMO players? Did you just take the most popular titles and their populations together? What is your error result for this? Certainly any number of those players could have been playing two more games at once.
Actually i thourghly enjoyed WoW when it was a lvl 60 level cap and ironforge was still the place to be. Bombing runs is a novelty act, and world pvp is nothing new, they just added in an objective, tons of other games have world pvp centered around an objective, such as SWG and RF Online. Yes, the new areas are great I really did enjoy a few of them, but thats all that was new, a few different landscapes and a few new charecter/npc/monster designs, not too too much tho... and most of the new monster designs were in the hellfire peninsula... curious. Also, the BC was not that much larger then tons of other games. SWG always did a good job at the size and stuff they'd put in in they're expansions, you wouldnt get a "whole new 7 areas" but an entire new plannet with creatures local to only those places. you wouldnt see them anywhere else (please dont bring up anything about SOE). Another prime example is look at the expansion pack to City Of Heroes, not only was it an expansion but it could be a complete stand alone package thats how much they put in there. WoW was good, and yes, believe it or not the expansion didnt add anything different from what was already there. thats why everyone has been so disapointed by it.
1) You know how many people were complainign about the absence of World PvP in wow BEFORE the expansion? bucketloads. yes, you could do it, but there was no, you said it, OBJECTIVE to it. BGs were way more popular.
Now there are objectives.
2) 7 big areas. what other expansion give you so much? i don't say there ain't, but honestly, how many?
3) How come you bash wow's expansion for adding "nothing new" but hey, SWG's expansion that added... wait... more mobs, more space, more locations..... ie: nothing new, is great??
It is an EXPANSION. of course it will add to the original game, what were you expecting? a new game?
4) city of villains WAS a stand alone different game! it kinda took more than an expansion to make and it costed more too. their Content patches cannot hold a candle to BC but that is normal, they do not do paid expansions so the stuff they churn out is much less, they are still a small company after all and their dev time is limited.
5) YOU are disappointed by it. *I*'m not. The fact YOU are does not mean everybody is. Considering it has sold 1.4 mils of copies the first day, got 9.1 average reviews across the board, I daresay a minority is not happy with it, probably the ones that rushed trough. I might be wrong, but surely I do not see any "everyone" not happy with the expansion, just a handful of vocal forumites, but hey! this forum is not exactly famous for the "neutral" attitude toward WoW.
Actually, every other day there is a new "Wow Sux" thread. so go figure. There are so loads of people hating WoW that it should be closed down by now, right?
"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"
Yes SWGLover I think 2 mil gold farmers is not out of the question.
I've seen news specials where they show dozens of people "working" in an office. However, they aren't doing spreadsheets in those cubicles they are playing WoW to gather items and gold. That being only one of many "businesses" operating overseas. You really think that the 500k spike in subscriptions was 100% players? More like companies hiring more temps because of a new market opening up, namely TBC. Remember, each farmer is a subscriber until they get caught and banned.
Think back a couple months before TBC, were ingame mail about buywowgold and ads in chat channels as frequent as they are now? No they weren't, with more people farming they can be more bold as to how aggressive they want to advertise. Blizzard bans one account but there are ten more operating.
I have seen WoW's expansion and what is has to offer. I don't know if its really a "totally weak" expansion but it is, by no means, a ground-breaking expansion. EQ has had (I know ,SOE, lets have everyone shoot me now lol) some pointless expansions but has also had expansions that were, in fact, ground breaking like Shadows of Luclin (included new race, class, transporation methods, and Planet) and Lost Dungeons of Norrath (insertion of instanced zones for small groups for 1st time in EQ). BC is a normal expansion with its perks and its disappointments. Every expansion is going to have things missed and some things tinkered with that shouldn't have been. Look at what's positive in the expansion and hope that the stuff that wasn't added or changed will be in future expansions. It's not like Blizzard is never going to add other classes, races, and zones in future expansions. Max out BC's potential and move on to new expansions.
i agree 2 mill gold farmers isnt an outrageous amount. 3.5 mil players in china? thats like $80 a month to them, considering what their money is worth and buys for them. i wouldnt be surprised to hear if it was all gold farming accounts. FFXI had a huge problem with it, which is why i left. But with instances in WoW, the farmers dont interrupt gameplay like they do in FFXI, so i doubt they wil lever do anythign about it. As far as TBC goes, its pretty much as if they jsut made the game 10 lvs longer. i feel for my friends that played from launch ad raided for a year or so to get gear that is useless to them now, only to see that they are jsut right back at endgame 2 weeks later. Oh and it made all the previous endgame content useless, unless yo uhave 40 friends to run you through the raids before you level past 60 too much. Im not trashing TBC, but since i wasnt endgame before, there was nothing added that i could actually look forward to, cept 10 more lvs till endgame. but im sure the ppl compaining on here represent a decent chunk of the population. but so do the ppl defending it, and probably in similar proportions. and jsut because someone is let down with the add on doesnt mean they are gonna quit. but i bet alot of veteran players will not be interested in raiding for 2 years to get gear again, jsut to see it all go in the next add on.
Wow, hold on. Why isn't the 2 million gold farmer statistic extreme? What do you base such a figure on other than your biased opinion? If you're going to assert 1/4 of the wow community are farmers why couldn't 1/4 of all other communities be farmers and thus creating exactly the same ratios of players/game? Where do some of you get off asserting that most of the chinese players are farmers? Is that just an appeal to stereotypes?
The total MMO gamers was obtained from another project for a Stanford University graduate study in Social Science. So my errors are only as accurate as the stats I obtain. Obviously, the estimate is given a range, not a single number.
2 million gold farmers is way too high for any estimate. Statistically speaking, you only need to ask 3 people (randomly chosen) to get a curve (triangle shaped) that will resemble the bell curve. 5 to be considered a good estimate (actual bell shaped). So sample 5 random people who plays wow, and see how many are gold farmers. That should give you an rough estimate. Way more accurate than just saying things without evidence.
BTW, most Chinese players are players, not farmers => statistically speaking of course. Don't stereotype, it makes you look ignorant.
im sure its not 2 mill, i was just using a number someone else just pulled out of the air, i jsut used it so i wouldnt be talking in "x" and "y' numbers. my experience with farmers is solely from FFXI, where you would actually encounter them. You wouldnt really get much contact with farmers, due to instancing. oh and sure, stereotyping is bad, and all that, but we are talking in groups of millions. stereotypes are kinda necessary when not talking about individuals. no need to be so touchy. this is a message board, not something that actually matters
Compare these indexes and the stock price for Vivendi during the same period. See the correlation???? Now STFU and go take a finance class!
Haha, go take a literacy class. Then come back, read the title of the post (which you clicked). Read my reply. Maybe then you'll realize something about why I provided those statistics. Until then, you've been outsmarted by sarcasm, like a bull running towards the red and hitting the wall.
The subscriptions are climbing you moron. The accounts aren't necessarily owned by Americans considering WoW has made its way onto the global stage now. Accounts are accounts regardless of who they are owned by.
The term account is also variable... Account that are open and currently being played or the total number of keys that have been activated. I'm pretty sure the last time I checked Blizzard only considered an account an account if it was open and being played/paid.
America (300 million) Vs. World (6+ billion people)
If 7-8 million people in the states play just think how many could globally be playing if they marketed it correctly...
As far as TBC is concerned it was a very lazy expansion pack... So what they made two new models and an outland map. They could have done a TON more and probably will knowing blizzard. First release is awesome, second sucks, third is almost if not better than the original. Warcraft one... was great, Warcraft II was OK, Warcraft III Frozen Thrown was sweet. Why screw up a good pattern
THANK YOU. You may not realize it but you are the first person to actually move this post towards the conclusion I originally intended it to move towards. Of course, I have to come on here and support you because people are so damned slow that they still haven't reached the end of the logical river (kinda like WoW, only one treadmill, no branches. JK lol)
It's true that amount of WoW subcribers will probably start declining. Maybe it's starting now, maybe it'll start in a few years, we don't really know. But no matter how good a game is, people will still get eventually bored, and as new games wich offer serious competition to WoW come out, the outflux of bored people will exceed the influx of new player
It has already started. Guilds on my server are merging nonstop and my friends list has an unfamiliar grey color. 3 of my 4 RL friends have stopped playing and I have just begun to get rid of my account.
As for the stock, I thought Vivendi's game division sold seperate stock, and may have accidently linked the entire company. Once again, using it as a debating point is useless since stock != sales. However, it's still fun to look at. If by chance I have linked the whole of vivendi, then the graph is utterly useless!
And yet all of the new recommended servers are receving new players every day. Your assertion that people leaving particular servers is a reflect of mass cancelation is falacious. They could very well be moving to other servers. Its not as though such an action is remote or impossible.
What is your point in attempting to make it look as those WoW is collapsing? I really don't see that happening and I have no reason to think your statistics reflect this. Even if the player base halved they'd still be the most popular and profitable MMO in operation. If you don't play the game why do you care? Do you think that WoW's falling subscriptions will bulster your pet MMO? Why do you have so much invested interest in doom speaking?
I don't care that WoW is collapsing at all. I am here to try to find like-minded people (and I have). My statistics DONT reflect that. I am arguing against the idiots who think blizzard/Vivendi are making a killing because of WoW. Unfortunately, my joke is a little too far above most of your heads.
Why do I care? I want to discuss with other people how it feels to have hundreds of hours of time wasted. Perhaps when YOU waste a hundred hours you simply brush it off - maybe time isn't valuable to you? Do you not make decent money or go to school? Or perhaps you are one of those many WoW players who can't realize the massive ammount of time they are wasting, rather focusing on the carrot dangling from the string single-mindedly.
WoW isn't 'dying'. All MMORPGs gradually lose players over time. Unless you are suggesting that WoW will continue growing like the use of telephones/computers and eventually everyone in the world will play? I find your argument that the WoW population is growing/steady to be completely ridiculous as well as unfounded.
interestingly, last year I did a project for my MBA course on industry analysis of Online Gaming. Which of course included WoW. So here is the conclusion (with factual support) that will shine some light on some of the assumptions people are making.
1) As of 2005, there are about 10 million MMO players in the US. This include all MMO genres, not only the RPG titles. Don't forget the ever so popular Sims attract quite a crowd too among female players.
2) Blizzard states all accounts are Active, paid accounts.
IRVINE, Calif. – January 11, 2007 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft®, its subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), is now played by more than 8 million gamers around the world. World of Warcraft has also achieved new regional subscriber milestones, with more than 2 million players in North America, more than 1.5 million players in Europe, and more than 3.5 million players in China.
This is taken from blizzard's press release archive. Meaning 1 in 5 players in US plays WoW.
3) Vivendi Universal is a french media conglomerate which includes many media corporations within it's portfolio, and assuming the 8 x 10^6 * $50 initial sale + 8 x 10^6 * $13 monthly sub (using 13 as average) * 6 = 1 billion +, obviously, those numbers are a rough estimate, but even at 2 billion (assuming they have doubled the sales), vivendi universal have market capitalization (total worth in stocks) $60 billion as of 1999. And the 2 billion is revenue, not profit. Blizzard's games have no major effect on stock prices what so ever. AND prices do NOT normally go up before companies announce something, prices go up if the EXPECTED outcome exceeds expert estimates (check finance.yahoo.com to see some estimates), if the EXPECTED news will be that profit will be under expert estimates, stock prices WILL drop. But it also will depend on how investors see long term outcomes.
4) It is skewed to assume number of players are dropping based on what you read on the internet or hear from people. Because the people who have strong hatred tend to voice their thoughts thus making them more active on forums like this one. The content players will not spend their time writing on these forums; that's why you see mostly people who love or hate this game, but not a lot in the middle.
5) The best source to find out whether or not player base for WOW has been expanding is blizzard's press release. Keep in mind a couple of things. Warcraft I, human and orcs has sold 8 million copies to-date. And many people may hate this game, but Diablo 2 was very similar. The end game was endless pindle and meph runs for items. Which is what people do in WoW at end games. But it's the greed (that's right, greed!) that keeps people hooked, not the game itself. See how many people will play if all the items are either free or erased from game.
Very good. You hit moderate points all-in-all.
I'd like to further this argument by stating that Blizzard is a small part of Vivendi, and while their performance matters, they aren't 'making a killing' as so many fanboi's have come to claim here. Also, while making money is their business, they are not wholly concerned with it to the absolute. Remember, they ban players pretty often, and their game model rewards time played, not time subscribed (sometimes these go hand in hand, but as we've seen, the time played fluctuates alot based on the type of player and whether or not they've reached the endgame.)
WoW subscriptions haven't really grown alot lately, and are probably nearing the point where they are about to drop (concave down).
The total MMO gamers was obtained from another project for a Stanford University graduate study in Social Science. So my errors are only as accurate as the stats I obtain. Obviously, the estimate is given a range, not a single number.
2 million gold farmers is way too high for any estimate. Statistically speaking, you only need to ask 3 people (randomly chosen) to get a curve (triangle shaped) that will resemble the bell curve. 5 to be considered a good estimate (actual bell shaped). So sample 5 random people who plays wow, and see how many are gold farmers. That should give you an rough estimate. Way more accurate than just saying things without evidence.
BTW, most Chinese players are players, not farmers => statistically speaking of course. Don't stereotype, it makes you look ignorant.
Lol @ the last comment. What a business major! Talking about tolerance and whatnot and being concerned w/ world issues.
It's a little different in the Engineering college, we pretty much just do math and are concerned with science and internships.
The total MMO gamers was obtained from another project for a Stanford University graduate study in Social Science. So my errors are only as accurate as the stats I obtain. Obviously, the estimate is given a range, not a single number.
2 million gold farmers is way too high for any estimate. Statistically speaking, you only need to ask 3 people (randomly chosen) to get a curve (triangle shaped) that will resemble the bell curve. 5 to be considered a good estimate (actual bell shaped). So sample 5 random people who plays wow, and see how many are gold farmers. That should give you an rough estimate. Way more accurate than just saying things without evidence.
BTW, most Chinese players are players, not farmers => statistically speaking of course. Don't stereotype, it makes you look ignorant.
Lol @ the last comment. What a business major! Talking about tolerance and whatnot and being concerned w/ world issues.
It's a little different in the Engineering college, we pretty much just do math and are concerned with science and internships.
And apparently spending large amount of their free time attacking video games and gushing estrogen everywhere in the process.
Estrogen eh? Something against women? I think this post qualifies as a 'hate post' under the report option.
The total MMO gamers was obtained from another project for a Stanford University graduate study in Social Science. So my errors are only as accurate as the stats I obtain. Obviously, the estimate is given a range, not a single number.
2 million gold farmers is way too high for any estimate. Statistically speaking, you only need to ask 3 people (randomly chosen) to get a curve (triangle shaped) that will resemble the bell curve. 5 to be considered a good estimate (actual bell shaped). So sample 5 random people who plays wow, and see how many are gold farmers. That should give you an rough estimate. Way more accurate than just saying things without evidence.
BTW, most Chinese players are players, not farmers => statistically speaking of course. Don't stereotype, it makes you look ignorant.
Lol @ the last comment. What a business major! Talking about tolerance and whatnot and being concerned w/ world issues.
It's a little different in the Engineering college, we pretty much just do math and are concerned with science and internships.
And apparently spending large amount of their free time attacking video games and gushing estrogen everywhere in the process.
Estrogen eh? Something against women? I think this post qualifies as a 'hate post' under the report option. Could you really report some one for "hate" without leaving a foul taste in your mouth?
Not really. I just can't honestly insult you. Your points may be completely retarded and fallacious, whatever that means, but I know nothing about you;
Unlike you, I cannot insult the messenger. I hope that last statement isn't overly hypocritical.
Comments
Until there are viable alternatives to WoW for those 8-9 million subscribers, the numbers won't go down.
Sure there are a few decent MMOs that will come out this year, but very few will compete directly with WoW.
I've tried to get a few friends to cancel WoW and pick up LOTRO and wait for WAR and AOC, but most don't want to
stop their wowaddiction.
So you're sure that 2 million WoW players are gold farmers?
Does it seriously matter at all? With a few million in the US with another few million in EU and double that in Asia, does it make any different if 100k leave? 200K leave? MMORPGs naturally lose subscribers after a year and normally gain them every time an expansion hits. TBC alone still sold more units than most MMORPGs have total subscribers, combined. Leave Korean cafe MMORPGs out of it;) They seriously don't even count and have zero viablity outside that region. We're talking worldwide numbers.
Does all of this make any difference as to the sucess of popularity of WOW? Not in the slightest. This isn't like most MMORPGs where losing a few 1000 people means shutting down entire servers. WOW will be just like every other great MMORPG. It will slowly die out over a long period of time. If UO could survive this long with a few 1000 players still hanging on, it'll take a while to lose millions. Does it make WOW any less of a MMORPG? Hell no. Its still the pinacle acheivement in the genre.
Actually i thourghly enjoyed WoW when it was a lvl 60 level cap and ironforge was still the place to be.
Bombing runs is a novelty act, and world pvp is nothing new, they just added in an objective, tons of other games have world pvp centered around an objective, such as SWG and RF Online.
Yes, the new areas are great I really did enjoy a few of them, but thats all that was new, a few different landscapes and a few new charecter/npc/monster designs, not too too much tho... and most of the new monster designs were in the hellfire peninsula... curious.
Also, the BC was not that much larger then tons of other games. SWG always did a good job at the size and stuff they'd put in in they're expansions, you wouldnt get a "whole new 7 areas" but an entire new plannet with creatures local to only those places. you wouldnt see them anywhere else (please dont bring up anything about SOE). Another prime example is look at the expansion pack to City Of Heroes, not only was it an expansion but it could be a complete stand alone package thats how much they put in there.
WoW was good, and yes, believe it or not the expansion didnt add anything different from what was already there. thats why everyone has been so disapointed by it.
"And after blizzard takes over the world, they are gonna gather a bunch of lemmings, sit on their fat asses near a cliff, and watch the little fuzzy bastards suicide dive into the ground below. . . . . all just for their own entertainment."
If flying mounts, loads of new dungeons, a bunch of new zones to explore, viable or nearly equal gear for almost any playstyle, entire open PvP areas with objectives, new races, new talents, new mobs, new arenas, a new BG, new cities, and loads of little easter eggs as NOTHING new...to each his own. As to EVERYONE being dissapointed, a few vocal people on message boards equals a blip on the radar. Unless millions of people start quitting so 1/2 the US servers have to shut down or merge, WOW is doing as good as ever. Its only nothing new for all the vocal whiners who hated WOW before, yet still keep playing;)
1) As of 2005, there are about 10 million MMO players in the US. This include all MMO genres, not only the RPG titles. Don't forget the ever so popular Sims attract quite a crowd too among female players.
2) Blizzard states all accounts are Active, paid accounts.
IRVINE, Calif. – January 11, 2007 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft®, its subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), is now played by more than 8 million gamers around the world. World of Warcraft has also achieved new regional subscriber milestones, with more than 2 million players in North America, more than 1.5 million players in Europe, and more than 3.5 million players in China.
This is taken from blizzard's press release archive. Meaning 1 in 5 players in US plays WoW.
3) Vivendi Universal is a french media conglomerate which includes many media corporations within it's portfolio, and assuming the 8 x 10^6 * $50 initial sale + 8 x 10^6 * $13 monthly sub (using 13 as average) * 6 = 1 billion +, obviously, those numbers are a rough estimate, but even at 2 billion (assuming they have doubled the sales), vivendi universal have market capitalization (total worth in stocks) $60 billion as of 1999. And the 2 billion is revenue, not profit. Blizzard's games have no major effect on stock prices what so ever. AND prices do NOT normally go up before companies announce something, prices go up if the EXPECTED outcome exceeds expert estimates (check finance.yahoo.com to see some estimates), if the EXPECTED news will be that profit will be under expert estimates, stock prices WILL drop. But it also will depend on how investors see long term outcomes.
4) It is skewed to assume number of players are dropping based on what you read on the internet or hear from people. Because the people who have strong hatred tend to voice their thoughts thus making them more active on forums like this one. The content players will not spend their time writing on these forums; that's why you see mostly people who love or hate this game, but not a lot in the middle.
5) The best source to find out whether or not player base for WOW has been expanding is blizzard's press release. Keep in mind a couple of things. Warcraft I, human and orcs has sold 8 million copies to-date. And many people may hate this game, but Diablo 2 was very similar. The end game was endless pindle and meph runs for items. Which is what people do in WoW at end games. But it's the greed (that's right, greed!) that keeps people hooked, not the game itself. See how many people will play if all the items are either free or erased from game.
1) You know how many people were complainign about the absence of World PvP in wow BEFORE the expansion? bucketloads. yes, you could do it, but there was no, you said it, OBJECTIVE to it. BGs were way more popular.
Now there are objectives.
2) 7 big areas. what other expansion give you so much? i don't say there ain't, but honestly, how many?
3) How come you bash wow's expansion for adding "nothing new" but hey, SWG's expansion that added... wait... more mobs, more space, more locations..... ie: nothing new, is great??
It is an EXPANSION. of course it will add to the original game, what were you expecting? a new game?
4) city of villains WAS a stand alone different game! it kinda took more than an expansion to make and it costed more too. their Content patches cannot hold a candle to BC but that is normal, they do not do paid expansions so the stuff they churn out is much less, they are still a small company after all and their dev time is limited.
5) YOU are disappointed by it. *I*'m not. The fact YOU are does not mean everybody is. Considering it has sold 1.4 mils of copies the first day, got 9.1 average reviews across the board, I daresay a minority is not happy with it, probably the ones that rushed trough. I might be wrong, but surely I do not see any "everyone" not happy with the expansion, just a handful of vocal forumites, but hey! this forum is not exactly famous for the "neutral" attitude toward WoW.
Actually, every other day there is a new "Wow Sux" thread. so go figure. There are so loads of people hating WoW that it should be closed down by now, right?
"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"
Yes SWGLover I think 2 mil gold farmers is not out of the question.
I've seen news specials where they show dozens of people "working" in an office. However, they aren't doing spreadsheets in those cubicles they are playing WoW to gather items and gold. That being only one of many "businesses" operating overseas. You really think that the 500k spike in subscriptions was 100% players? More like companies hiring more temps because of a new market opening up, namely TBC. Remember, each farmer is a subscriber until they get caught and banned.
Think back a couple months before TBC, were ingame mail about buywowgold and ads in chat channels as frequent as they are now? No they weren't, with more people farming they can be more bold as to how aggressive they want to advertise. Blizzard bans one account but there are ten more operating.
i agree 2 mill gold farmers isnt an outrageous amount. 3.5 mil players in china? thats like $80 a month to them, considering what their money is worth and buys for them. i wouldnt be surprised to hear if it was all gold farming accounts. FFXI had a huge problem with it, which is why i left. But with instances in WoW, the farmers dont interrupt gameplay like they do in FFXI, so i doubt they wil lever do anythign about it. As far as TBC goes, its pretty much as if they jsut made the game 10 lvs longer. i feel for my friends that played from launch ad raided for a year or so to get gear that is useless to them now, only to see that they are jsut right back at endgame 2 weeks later. Oh and it made all the previous endgame content useless, unless yo uhave 40 friends to run you through the raids before you level past 60 too much. Im not trashing TBC, but since i wasnt endgame before, there was nothing added that i could actually look forward to, cept 10 more lvs till endgame. but im sure the ppl compaining on here represent a decent chunk of the population. but so do the ppl defending it, and probably in similar proportions. and jsut because someone is let down with the add on doesnt mean they are gonna quit. but i bet alot of veteran players will not be interested in raiding for 2 years to get gear again, jsut to see it all go in the next add on.
2 million gold farmers is way too high for any estimate. Statistically speaking, you only need to ask 3 people (randomly chosen) to get a curve (triangle shaped) that will resemble the bell curve. 5 to be considered a good estimate (actual bell shaped). So sample 5 random people who plays wow, and see how many are gold farmers. That should give you an rough estimate. Way more accurate than just saying things without evidence.
BTW, most Chinese players are players, not farmers => statistically speaking of course. Don't stereotype, it makes you look ignorant.
Haha, go take a literacy class. Then come back, read the title of the post (which you clicked). Read my reply. Maybe then you'll realize something about why I provided those statistics. Until then, you've been outsmarted by sarcasm, like a bull running towards the red and hitting the wall.
It has already started. Guilds on my server are merging nonstop and my friends list has an unfamiliar grey color. 3 of my 4 RL friends have stopped playing and I have just begun to get rid of my account.
As for the stock, I thought Vivendi's game division sold seperate stock, and may have accidently linked the entire company. Once again, using it as a debating point is useless since stock != sales. However, it's still fun to look at. If by chance I have linked the whole of vivendi, then the graph is utterly useless!
And yet all of the new recommended servers are receving new players every day. Your assertion that people leaving particular servers is a reflect of mass cancelation is falacious. They could very well be moving to other servers. Its not as though such an action is remote or impossible.
What is your point in attempting to make it look as those WoW is collapsing? I really don't see that happening and I have no reason to think your statistics reflect this. Even if the player base halved they'd still be the most popular and profitable MMO in operation. If you don't play the game why do you care? Do you think that WoW's falling subscriptions will bulster your pet MMO? Why do you have so much invested interest in doom speaking?
I don't care that WoW is collapsing at all. I am here to try to find like-minded people (and I have). My statistics DONT reflect that. I am arguing against the idiots who think blizzard/Vivendi are making a killing because of WoW. Unfortunately, my joke is a little too far above most of your heads.
Why do I care? I want to discuss with other people how it feels to have hundreds of hours of time wasted. Perhaps when YOU waste a hundred hours you simply brush it off - maybe time isn't valuable to you? Do you not make decent money or go to school? Or perhaps you are one of those many WoW players who can't realize the massive ammount of time they are wasting, rather focusing on the carrot dangling from the string single-mindedly.
WoW isn't 'dying'. All MMORPGs gradually lose players over time. Unless you are suggesting that WoW will continue growing like the use of telephones/computers and eventually everyone in the world will play? I find your argument that the WoW population is growing/steady to be completely ridiculous as well as unfounded.
Very good. You hit moderate points all-in-all.
I'd like to further this argument by stating that Blizzard is a small part of Vivendi, and while their performance matters, they aren't 'making a killing' as so many fanboi's have come to claim here. Also, while making money is their business, they are not wholly concerned with it to the absolute. Remember, they ban players pretty often, and their game model rewards time played, not time subscribed (sometimes these go hand in hand, but as we've seen, the time played fluctuates alot based on the type of player and whether or not they've reached the endgame.)
WoW subscriptions haven't really grown alot lately, and are probably nearing the point where they are about to drop (concave down).
Lol @ the last comment. What a business major! Talking about tolerance and whatnot and being concerned w/ world issues.
It's a little different in the Engineering college, we pretty much just do math and are concerned with science and internships.
Lol @ the last comment. What a business major! Talking about tolerance and whatnot and being concerned w/ world issues.
It's a little different in the Engineering college, we pretty much just do math and are concerned with science and internships.
And apparently spending large amount of their free time attacking video games and gushing estrogen everywhere in the process.
Estrogen eh? Something against women? I think this post qualifies as a 'hate post' under the report option.
Lol @ the last comment. What a business major! Talking about tolerance and whatnot and being concerned w/ world issues.
It's a little different in the Engineering college, we pretty much just do math and are concerned with science and internships.
And apparently spending large amount of their free time attacking video games and gushing estrogen everywhere in the process.
Estrogen eh? Something against women? I think this post qualifies as a 'hate post' under the report option. Could you really report some one for "hate" without leaving a foul taste in your mouth?
Nah I actually don't report anyone. So you're right.
http://images.mmorpg.com/images/ads/1180.jpg
You are that girl, look where the broom comes out. Subliminal advertising eh?
Not really. I just can't honestly insult you. Your points may be completely retarded and fallacious, whatever that means, but I know nothing about you;
Unlike you, I cannot insult the messenger. I hope that last statement isn't overly hypocritical.
T.R.