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When will it actually die?
Krekko
Member Posts: 19
Yeah, I'm talking about World of Warcraft.(Surprise?)
So, we have a game here whose total subscriber numbers, continues to rise and all of the MMO Vets are just waiting for that one game that will make a dent in the titan, but I don't think it will be enough. Its rampant amongst the community that there is a deep hatred for this game, but I want to look at something different. I don't want to talk about PvE, Arenas, gameplay or any of that. I want to take a look into the driving life force of the game. The people.
1. Computer - To start it simple, as everyone knows, this game will run on a vast majority of computers. If you go to a machine with some RAM, a GPU from this decade, and a processer, it will most likey run. This gives the game major access to everyone in the world for many many years to come.
2. The New Generation - Most of us, did not grow up in the era of when the internet was as important to life as it is now. This new generation of gamers coming up can grasp the concept of the internet at a very little age. As early as age 8, or maybe earlier, someone can hop onto a console and start playing online. Eventually, in a few years, this child may want to enter into the MMO world. Where would he start? The most popular game he knows, and maybe some of his friends know about. WoW. Most likely, the parents are going to take care of the $15/month fee and chances are, if they are willing to do so, they have a home computer. And it will be able to play WoW.
There is one thing though, that really separates us and these growing kids is that it is impossible for them to be jaded. They have not played any old MMOs, they do not know how annoying it is to see "Collect 10 Rat Hides" because they are seeing all of this for the very first time and give it very little though. It is a new and interesting world, and they are going to be sucked in by it.
3. The MMO Lifespan - In 1997, Ultima Online was released and 11 years later, the game is still up and running. About halfway through 2001, the game hit its peak in subscribers, around 250-300k and the decline started a few months later. We haven't seen WoW's highest peak yet. The game is still growing, as I'm typing this, hundreds of people are putting their game cards and credit cards into the account page. UO, so far, has been able to pull a little over a decade of life on a peak subscriber base which was lower than WoW's initial subscriber base. This brings up the question, how long will WoW actually stay active? I think we can easily see a total life span of up to 20+ years. That is a long !#% time. In this time period, more generation of gamers will be coming into the game adding more years into the life span. I also find it very believable, because there is no sight in the future of a great gaming break through for the industry which would make WoW look like what an NES game looks like to us now. When are we going to see the transition from the SNES to the N64 happen again? And if it does, will it a large population of the world be able to enjoy it as they do WoW?
4. China - China currently holds the largest subscriber base for WoW and the largest population in the world. Even with the one child per family rule, there are still kids who are entering the MMO World, whether it be for pleasure, or work. With China now becoming a major super power in the world, their economy is becoming very huge. More children are being put onto computers to pay WoW, and the game has almost become self-suffient. Chinese gold farmer pays X amount to play the game, sells the Y amoount gold he makes for a lot more to an American or European player or even another Chinese player and uses that money to keep making more money. Everyday, more and more children are put to work in these facilities as it is obviously a growing market and there is a decent amount of cash to be made.
Well, there is my take on the situation. I tried my best to keep it as short as possible so it wasn't too much a TLDR. Some of my points probably came across too vague because of it, and a little bit of the post were just thoughts roaming my mind that I just threw in. I really would like to hear the thoughts from others about the entire people aspect of the game, and I don't mind a little criticism. So let me hear it; what do you guys think?
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Comments
Given the numbers I'd have to say appx. 40 years from now. Consider the horrible MMOs that still have a heart beat that have been around since the mid ninties. EQ, UO, DDO, ect. even these outdated MMOs still have regular players and subs. I think a game like WoW where you spend so much time trying to get your favorite gear will be difficult for people to just let go since they put so much of their time into the game. Of course it is hard to predict, but I honestly don't see it happening for a loooooong time.
WAR will more than likely put a dent in WoWs numbers though, but nothing too serious because a lot of WAR fans seem to be anti-WoW.
I'd say once Blizzard releases a new MMO, and takes most of it's attention away from WoW, it will begin to thin out. I doubt it will ever die out in the next 20 years, lmao. Even if there is another MMO, people will still play.
Even if Blizzard comes out with a new mmo that requires a more up to date computer, you will still see people playing the original for a long time. Take Counter Strike and Counter Strike Source for example.
It really doesn't matter to me. As I've said before, WoW is the crap filter of the MMO world. If WoW went away, all those annoying kids would find their way to games that are actually worth playing.
So no, keep WoW around, it keeps other games clearer of idiots.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Although, I tend to believe a big name company like Blizzard won't keep a game on the shelf any longer than it makes them money. As soon as server costs approach sales revenue it'll come down. We haven't really seen a video game giant make a subscription based MMO, so saying that it'll stick around because all of these others are still around is invalid in my view. Those games are still around because the creators loved them. WoW is the red headed step child Blizzard realized could be prostituted, as soon as it gets too old, it'll be locked in a closet...
<--- Likes to put a different spin on things when possible
When they make World of Warcraft 2
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
If you are talking about Europe + US then WoW stopped growing already in the beginning of 2007, since then the numbers of active players have been around 800k, give or take 100k because of season variation. -100k at summer +100k at januar to mars.
What Blizzard is doing now is to release expansions to keep players staying, much in the same way Everquest 2 gets expansions, to slow the decline.
It will take a long time for a game to truly die if there still is money to sustain it. But it will decline when the numbers of new players stops to come because there are better games out there. Up until AoC there wasn´t that much of serious competition except Guild Wars to WoW and because of that Blizzard could do serious mistakes and still keep the players because they really didn´t had any choise.
But now Blizzard has painted itself in a corner since its old sin to not balance the Alliance / Horde ratio in the realms, is coming back big time. Battlegrounds starts with one side often outnumbering the other side with 1:2 and the very reason battlegrounds were implented was because World pvp was extremly one sided on realm where one fraction was much bigger than the other.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=6762170838&sid=1 being an extreme example. Notice the lack of blue posts.
Now this imbalance is everywhere except Arenas. And arenas is depended a lot of the classes being balanced towards each other. And they are not. Teams in 2v2 and 3v3 bracket teams with rogues are totally dominating for example. One really can´t blame PvP players for leaving WoW as it is now. And with AoC out in stores already and with WAR coming, as well as Guild Wars 2 they will have plenty to chose from.
Anyway you should have asked when will it stop being a game played by more than 8 million player. Then I will guess in less than 3 years time or so. And it could lose its number 1 spot in US and Europe in less than 2 years.
800k users? I suspect there will be massive server mergers soon if that is the case.
Where did you get that figure if I might ask.
WoW's subscriber number is growing. It has been growing for years. Time will not put a dent in WoW's subscriptions. Only a great MMO or a fatal error can.
You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.
-Will Rogers
As long is there is a demand for virtual world chat rooms, “collecting pretty things” games and walking sims, WoW will be around.
When do you think Mario and Wario are going to die?
based on the thread title I was thinking you were talking about SWG.
It has been discussed before and i will give you my same answer to this question. Warcraft will die when the 10million or whatever it is now who play it dies.
my arent we feeling a bit trollish lol
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
Ah sorry, thought I pasted in the link, it is from warcraftrealms.com
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity-2008-05.htm
And 800k +/- 100k is the numbers of active players at prime time in US + Europe as you can see since februar 2007.
The numbers of characters including alts etc are ofc much higher. http://www.warcraftrealms.com/quickstats.php.
But if you want to find groups etc it is the player activity, the numbers of active players that are important.
Wow will continue to rule the roost as long as companies like Funcom, Turbine, SOE, etc continue to put out mediocre competition. AoC was a huge disappointment for many, and a good portion of that playerbase will be back on these boards looking for new games within 3 months, it is that shallow.
I have not seen War, so I cannot comment on that game, but Mythic's track record in the past has not been very good. Maybe they will surprise us.
After War I don't see any new challengers with promise. Who knows, maybe there is a diamond in the rough out there.
I deleted AoC and went back to playing Eve, at least there is one decent MMO out there that fits my playstyle. But then Eve is not for everyone, it has a very steep learning curve.
Mediocore compettion will go far when Blizzard releases medioce expansions. There is a reason the numbers of WoW player hasn´t been stuck at around 800k active players since februar 2007 in EU and USA.
This is taken from EU-forums: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html;jsessionid=C0CC692916990FB19D529806647960D6.app09_04?topicId=4272177270&sid=1
"Lets see what TBC brought with it shall we?
1). Serious equipment repetition, not only did they just rehash (umm.. recolour) a lot of tier 1 but they also decided to duplicate PvP and PVE gear.
2). Lower world drop rate, when I farmed pre-TBC I could be guaranteed at least a blue in 1 full days grinding. Now I could farm for weeks and still no get a single blue.
3). PvP - A part timer friendly system? Ofc but one (applying to Arena) which also ensures that you cannot gain the equipment by putting in the time. i.e. you still have to wait weeks to get even just one piece regardless of how much time you have. Beautiful this.
4). Equipment hand-outs i.e. PvP and Badge loot. The badge system works beautifully for Blizzard, not only can they keep people hooked on farming heroics but they can keep this system alive by introducing more loot from badges at various intervals. How many times can one person do a Heroic? This what you call fun? Farming the same instance 30 times for an item? then another 300 times for the rest, then be forced to repeat the whole process again once Blizzard release another patch with yet more badge obtainable gear? Hold a minute Blizzard didn't I just farm those heroics like 10,000 times for the pre-patch badge loot, now you want me to do it all again ....and again? ohhh the excitement.
5). Killing off World PvP, no incentive to do anything world PvP wise, elites placed in every small town ensuring that no one disturbs a thing, ohhh and the invisible spawning guards ...love those.
6). Resilience, I know what its for, but still it undermines the gains from the best PVE equipment.
7). Individuality loss, the point of the game for many (esp those who played RPGs before) was to build a character/Avatar that stood out from the rest, yes it may be vain to enjoy people inspecting you and to stand out in PvP but for many RPG players this is part of the reason why they strived to better themselves. Now equipment is common as muck, everyone looks the same and now frankly no one cares about who has what.
8). Blizzard's greed factor, has simply gone through the roof since TBC, this "Ever changing world" (quote from Jeff Kaplin) only changes when Blizzard want to slow progress down, or the implementation of 'quick-fix" ideas that keep people hanging on for the next patch/exp ...more heroics anyone?
9). PvP, again, how many times can someone play BGs? Which in turn lowers player attitude and promotes negativity from which comes a loss of enthusiasm and teamwork.
10). Lack of veteran player support, the introduction of increased PvP rewards close to expansion has devastating effects on guilds, some of which never recover, and this has a drastic effect on veteran players who find it extremely hard to adapt to new guilds, esp if you have been in a long term guild. Doesn't ever feel the same. Whose fault is this?
11). The undermining of Lore in TBC. "
Mediocore compettion will go far when Blizzard releases medioce expansions. There is a reason the numbers of WoW player hasn´t been stuck at around 800k active players since februar 2007 in EU and USA.
This is taken from EU-forums: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html;jsessionid=C0CC692916990FB19D529806647960D6.app09_04?topicId=4272177270&sid=1
"Lets see what TBC brought with it shall we?
1). Serious equipment repetition, not only did they just rehash (umm.. recolour) a lot of tier 1 but they also decided to duplicate PvP and PVE gear.
2). Lower world drop rate, when I farmed pre-TBC I could be guaranteed at least a blue in 1 full days grinding. Now I could farm for weeks and still no get a single blue.
3). PvP - A part timer friendly system? Ofc but one (applying to Arena) which also ensures that you cannot gain the equipment by putting in the time. i.e. you still have to wait weeks to get even just one piece regardless of how much time you have. Beautiful this.
4). Equipment hand-outs i.e. PvP and Badge loot. The badge system works beautifully for Blizzard, not only can they keep people hooked on farming heroics but they can keep this system alive by introducing more loot from badges at various intervals. How many times can one person do a Heroic? This what you call fun? Farming the same instance 30 times for an item? then another 300 times for the rest, then be forced to repeat the whole process again once Blizzard release another patch with yet more badge obtainable gear? Hold a minute Blizzard didn't I just farm those heroics like 10,000 times for the pre-patch badge loot, now you want me to do it all again ....and again? ohhh the excitement.
5). Killing off World PvP, no incentive to do anything world PvP wise, elites placed in every small town ensuring that no one disturbs a thing, ohhh and the invisible spawning guards ...love those.
6). Resilience, I know what its for, but still it undermines the gains from the best PVE equipment.
7). Individuality loss, the point of the game for many (esp those who played RPGs before) was to build a character/Avatar that stood out from the rest, yes it may be vain to enjoy people inspecting you and to stand out in PvP but for many RPG players this is part of the reason why they strived to better themselves. Now equipment is common as muck, everyone looks the same and now frankly no one cares about who has what.
8). Blizzard's greed factor, has simply gone through the roof since TBC, this "Ever changing world" (quote from Jeff Kaplin) only changes when Blizzard want to slow progress down, or the implementation of 'quick-fix" ideas that keep people hanging on for the next patch/exp ...more heroics anyone?
9). PvP, again, how many times can someone play BGs? Which in turn lowers player attitude and promotes negativity from which comes a loss of enthusiasm and teamwork.
10). Lack of veteran player support, the introduction of increased PvP rewards close to expansion has devastating effects on guilds, some of which never recover, and this has a drastic effect on veteran players who find it extremely hard to adapt to new guilds, esp if you have been in a long term guild. Doesn't ever feel the same. Whose fault is this?
11). The undermining of Lore in TBC. "
And yet there still is no drop in subscribers in the US/EU (This can be checked at any time by looking at the actual numbers)
Horrible MMOs? Eq, UO...HORRIBLE?!?
Those games are actually good. I'm sorry you never played them. I'm sorry your first game was WoW. Maybe if they had pretty graphics you'd be first in line to play?
All the old MMOs like EQ, UO, AC, and DAoC had a sense of accomplishment in PvE and PvP that is seriously lacking in today's MMOs.
The quests in EQ were epic. They required lots of time and effort and even help from groups and guilds to raid certain bosses. If you were lucky you could get your shawl quest done in a week.
WoW will die when they make WoW2 or, god for bide, World of Diablo. I would blow up Blizzard HQ if they turned D3 into an MMORPG and not a hack'n slash like d1 and d2.
Also, EL O FUCKING EL at the WoW only have 800k subscribers in the states and EU combined. Seeing how they hit a record of 4 or 5 million before expanding to China...I'm gonna say it's probably around 2.5-3.5mil subscribers in the states and EU combined if not more.
When game companies stop making MMOs geared toward casual players, soccer moms, and grandparents we will see a resurgence of meaningful MMOs like the wonder years...a phoenix rising from the ash.
Horrible MMOs? Eq, UO...HORRIBLE?!?
Those games are actually good. I'm sorry you never played them. I'm sorry your first game was WoW. Maybe if they had pretty graphics you'd be first in line to play?
All the old MMOs like EQ, UO, AC, and DAoC had a sense of accomplishment in PvE and PvP that is seriously lacking in today's MMOs.
The quests in EQ were epic. They required lots of time and effort and even help from groups and guilds to raid certain bosses. If you were lucky you could get your shawl quest done in a week.
WoW will die when they make WoW2 or, god for bide, World of Diablo. I would blow up Blizzard HQ if they turned D3 into an MMORPG and not a hack'n slash like d1 and d2.
Also, EL O FUCKING EL at the WoW only have 800k subscribers in the states and EU combined. Seeing how they hit a record of 4 or 5 million before expanding to China...I'm gonna say it's probably around 2.5-3.5mil subscribers in the states and EU combined if not more.
When game companies stop making MMOs geared toward casual players, soccer moms, and grandparents we will see a resurgence of meaningful MMOs like the wonder years...a phoenix rising from the ash.
It's more, 4,5 million US/EU, 5,5 million in Asia.
The last time I read about WoW's subscriptions WOW was at 2.5 million in NA, alone. Dunno, where you get your info from, but I'm suspecting the same place you're suppose to wipe. You sound like a disgruntled former, or current, WoW player
Anyways, if DAoC and AC can still be running with 3000 users or less online at peak, I would think WoW has a long, long life.
Of course, to me a MMOG can be dead long before its shutdown, IE DAOC, EQ, UO. All those are dead to me, because it actually takes a significant amount of players for these games to be fun.
BTW, just because there are 800,000 players on doesn't mean there are only 800,000 current players if that is what you are thinking.
When will it die so much it would have been a mere shadow of its former self...I don't know if I've ever been satisfied with an answer to that question. Bioware gave a good answer at one of those conference thingies...surviving in a post WoW world or some such it was called.
Even though I can't make a satisfactory answer, even to myself, I will put down some things.
WoW will die when developers create a game with:
They've done well for themselves and they have reaped the success. I still think WoW a good game and respect them for what they accomplished.
Who knows though. Perhaps the stars just aligned and it was mere fate this happened.
AC2 Player RIP Final Death Jan 31st 2017
Refugee of Auberean
Refugee of Dereth
You are confusing "active players" with subscribers. Take census checks at prime time on a High pop pve realm at say 21:00 you will get something like 2500 Allys and 1200 Horde. In this example this will mean 3700 active players.
800 / 3.7 = 216 US+ Europe realms if they all where high-pop. Dunno how close this is the actual numbers of realms. But now you know where the sum 800k active players is from.
The numbers of subscribers are ofc much more, but many of those are logged in so rarely that they don´t have any effect on economy or have time to do raiding instances etc. But what matter for the players in the realm are the numbers of active players.
And when those numbers shrank to 700k during the summer 2007 many raids were cancelled due to lack of players. This year we will have the double impact of both summer and AoC affecting the numbers of active players.
You are confusing "active players" with subscribers. Take census checks at prime time on a High pop pve realm at say 21:00 you will get something like 2500 Allys and 1200 Horde. In this example this will mean 3700 active players.
800 / 3.7 = 216 US+ Europe realms if they all where high-pop. Dunno how close this is the actual numbers of realms. But now you know where the sum 800k active players is from.
The numbers of subscribers are ofc much more, but many of those are logged in so rarely that they don´t have any effect on economy or have time to do raiding instances etc. But what matter for the players in the realm are the numbers of active players.
And when those numbers shrank to 700k during the summer 2007 many raids were cancelled due to lack of players. This year we will have the double impact of both summer and AoC affecting the numbers of active players.
Lol...AoC currently only has 400k subscribers, many of those people(and I am one of them) will not be subscribing after our free month. Many of us have already uninstalled the game.
The only thing AoC has on WoW is better graphics which means nothing and FFA PvP. The FFA PvP is ruined by the instancing of zones. Hell...PvP in AoC is basically like WoW. You can only attack a guilds keep in a 48v48 glorified AV....basically you won't lose anything. They have PvP skirmishes that are eerily similar to battlegrounds.
AoC was a big let down and they will be lucky to see a subscriber base over 1 million...and that's being nice.
There are more than 200 players on Mal'Ganis during Prime Time and non-prime time hours.
Obviously Blizzard made stupid moves making new servers instead where the population on most is low. They can just merge them and the amount per server will drastically increase. However, why does that matter? To level up in WoW you don't ever have to group. Which is the reason why the game sucks. There's no sense of community like there was in the old MMOs like EQ.
The only game that has a chance to make a dent in WoW is WAR with some other games in the distant future such as GW2 which will have a persistant world, RvR like PvP, AND IT IS FREE TO PLAY!
Those 800k is from http://www.warcraftrealms.com/article/2008/May+Update+and+Concurrency+Numbers&fid=4
And the figure: http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity-2008-05.htm
And that is what I have been saying all the time: The numbers of active players has stayed about the same (800k +/- 100k) since februar 2007. Up until then it was a steady increase.
And as the author of warcraftrealm.com noted " It's that time of the month again and we have calculated the April concurrency numbers provided by the CensusPlus UI Addon.
Well, April is showing a drop in concurrent players. Dramatically so for EU players, possibly even too dramatic."
And we have yet to see the numbers for May 2008.