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WoW gamers, here to stay or will they leave the genre ?
admriker4
Member Posts: 1,070
Based on subscription numbers its clear that a huge majority of gamers in WoW are brand new to MMO genre. I would estimate 80-90% easily have never played before with the remainder vets from previous MMO's. I base this on subscription numbers both before and after WoW launched.
Populations didnt drop much for other MMO's when WoW launched therefore most are new to the genre. Thats about 8-9 million players new to the MMO scene.
My question is this, are those 8-9 million players likely to stick with MMO's or leave them once WoW grows stale ?
My personal experience is this....
I left 2 weeks ago after having essentially beaten the expansion. Before I left our guild had a meeting to discuss disbanding and the future. I brought up other MMO options but there was little support. Most planned on going back to their single player games.
I brought this subject up in trade chat (get more responses there). The consensus was many were waiting for Diablo 3 and would leave then. I mentioned that umm D3 wouldnt be a MMO. So what was the response. I also heard Mass Effect and a few console games mentioned if said player got bored with WoW.
I only heard a few MMO's mentioned like Darkfall and The Old Republic.
My opinion is that most of the 8-9 million new to MMO's and playing WoW dont really comprehend what it means to be an MMO. The line to them between Multiplayer and MMO have been blurred. To mention Diablo 3 as a viable replacement proves this.
WoW like all things will eventually get stale. Will these players leave for another MMO or return to multiplayer games and other forms of entertainment ?
Comments
I don't agree with your estimation that 80 to 90 percent of wow players are mmorpg virgins.
I don't consider myself hardcore but I had played Ultima Online, Anarchy Online, EvE and Everquest 2 prior to playing WoW. I remember many conversation with friends and guild mates about mmo's we had played prior to WoW. I remember how shocked I was when my own personal friend (and guildmate) said he had only played wow when I convinced him to try out 2moons with me (stinker).
I think WoW is the "Gateway drug" for many and those who quit will try to find something similar to satisfy thier fix.
Many who leave wow, return.
Since launch I've come and gone 4 times. I think it is a fantastic game.
I'm dying to see what blizzard has in the works for its next "secret mmorpg"
I couldn't pick any of those options to be honest.
Sure some will stay, but for the masses it all depends on what the market offers and not what the players do. If mmos keep repeating the stale unfinished release method then people will leave when their current mmo grows boring (Not just WoW).
The problem is there are just not enough quality options to spread the market out and all games end sometime. The market as a whole might go away at this pace.
Or will they come here in five years after trying countless other games and bitch and moan about how no new game is good as WOW was.
It's a proven historical fact that beer saved humankind.
I'm not sure if that's entirely true, OP, but I think more or less people in games like WoW are hooked on the social aspect of the game rather than the gameplay. It's sorta like you hate the food or you don't find it exactly to your tastes, but you love the company. That's the sort of phenomenon I see driving WoW, because even folks that would consider themselves hardcore fans of WoW have had their issues with Blizzard's lack of forthrightness on the issue of class balance, especially on the PVE side of things.
Yet, many of them stay regardless. And I don't blame them when everyone and their brother thinks by mimicking WoW right down to the art style that they'll automatically have dollars fall to them from the sky. So, there's no incentive to try anything new. The only really different games tend to be in the single player space, and that's the rub: single player games often have the innovations of gameplay, but none of the social aspects (barring console games). When developers in the MMO space stop being medicore and ask themselves what sorts of ideas would make a game fun and new, then we'll see a real movement of change in MMO development. Right now, it's the mediocre developers that are calling the shots and they seem to still have the attention of the investors rather than new blood (either from existing traditional single player game development firms or quite literally bedroom programming folks).
what do you think will happen when they leave wow and find out all the other "top rated" mmos are wow clones?
World of Warcraft may be their gateway drug, but they sure as hell have bitched and moaned when every game that has come out since WoW's release wasn't 'more like WoW'.
The 'WoW virgins' don't want anything new or innovative in a new game, they want WoW with a different skin, something that is essentially counter-productive to the future development of the MMORPG industry/genre.
If you add up the total number of MMO gamers before WoW launched it adds up to roughly 4 million players. After WoW launched the other MMO's remained pretty steady. Some games like Star Wars Galaxies lost about 50,000 players. In total current MMO games didnt fall by much in total (maybe 250,000 at most)
Even assuming turnover, very few MMO players leave the genre permanently. They might quit EQ1 but they end up in DAoC or SWG back then. So there isnt this multi-million MMO crowd that was waiting around for a game like WoW to appear. This means the the MMO population totals remained quite steady through the years before WoW appeared. Player A leaves DAoC so -1 but ends up in SWG so +1 = even
Previous generations did bring in new gamers to MMO's but the numbers were quite small compared to WoW. WoW introduced millions and millions to MMO's. WoW is so massive that it alone has x3 more players than the rest of the market genre combined.
Therefore at least 80-90% of the 11.5 million MMO players in WoW are brand spankin new to the genre.
The question is will these millions new to MMO's find a new MMO once WoW grows stale or will they return to wherever they came from ? It will be interesting to see if this industry expands beyond WoW, shrinks back to pre-WoW numbers, or remains the same.
World of Warcraft may be their gateway drug, but they sure as hell have bitched and moaned when every game that has come out since WoW's release wasn't 'more like WoW'.
The 'WoW virgins' don't want anything new or innovative in a new game, they want WoW with a different skin, something that is essentially counter-productive to the future development of the MMORPG industry/genre.
honestly they are no different than us 1st generation MMO gamers. We moan about current MMO's because they lack housing, a player run economy, and decent crafting that really matters.
And your right, I saw many WoW gamers complaining about Age of Conan. Ironically their chief complaints was too small of a world with many zones (the same complaint we had about WoW)
They might move to Blizzards next game, I am actually willing to bet it will be world of Diablo (Morhaime said it was similar but not quite the same as Wow, that rules Worls of Starcraft out and I kinda doubt they will invent a new world or pay to use someones else, besides the Diablo games are a big hit with many fans and should work well in a MMO).
Of course you can never be sure that the old fans would like the new game, most EQ fans never moved over to EQ2. Also the competition for new games will be bigger with games like TOR, World of darkness online, GW2, Fallout online (or Elder scrolls online, whatever Bethesda are doing), GW2 and so on.
And some Wow players will surely do as the current UO and EQ playeers do, stay with their game until the end whenever that comes.
But I am sure that at least some of the virgin players will move on to other MMOs, after all they are a lot more social than other game and addictive.
I would suggest that the reverse will probably be true.
With WoW as the leading example of the genre and niche games struggling left and right, it's an easy assumption that emergent projects will look to WoW as an example of how to make a product that sells well.
Hence, what we're likely to see is more mainstream, casual friendly MMOs with heavy emphasis on accessibility and variety, rather than the limited and specialised MMO releases we've seen recently.
People who like WoW will continue playing WoW (and MMO's like it) and people who don't like WoW may find themselves turning to lesser known indie titles that offer the gameplay that they enjoy; but indie games often have a relatively low population and retention.
It should also be noted that the longer time passes, the less likely some WoW players will be to quit the game; it's not difficult to walk away from a max level character, but when you have 10 of them and thousands of hours invested into the game, there's an added incentive to stick with it rather than start over.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
god i hope they leave, WoW was the worst thing that happen to the genre it be SO popular will just make developers try to grab the WoW audience by making every MMO like WoW.
as you see that trend already happening.
They'll stay, why WOULD they leave? lol
It's not like Wow is crashing anytime soon. Wow probably has a good 7-10 years left.. until someone invents another "Easy AND Fun" game for the masses. No one is on the horizon with this. Devs are trying to make "Complex and fun" now, but so far we get "Easy and boring", "Broken and fun", "Complex and vaporware". No need to worry about the Wow gamers, they will stay planted as a whole. Blizzard knows this and is easily able to replace the small amount that leave in intervals, because its "Easy and Fun". Why are you worrying about something that won't happen for another decade probably? This thread is like saying "One day the sun will stop shining and blow up, will things change?" Yeah, LONG time from now so..
So you and your guild beat WoTLK. Grats and snore. What's the name of your guild and server so I can look it up to see just how big a dent it's making to Wow, or are you not willing to say that? You know how many guilds disband daily in Wow? Plenty big ones break and they are replaced and reformed in less than a week. No one misses disbanded guilds in Wow except the people who ran them.
You and I know that is not the majority of people playing Wow. Less than 10% of players "beat" WoTLK. Know how I know? No way 1,000,000 people beat WoTLK because there aren't that many hardcore raiding guilds even IN Wow. Most guilds in Wow are casual; they do what they do.. whenever. Half can't make their schedules stick for doing something due to real life issues. There are probably more Crafting guilds in Wow than raiding guilds lol. Probably less than 25,000 people MAY have 'beat' WoTLK in reality. I gave you 10% to show even that is nothing.
Even if 10% beat WoTLK and quit Wow.. err.. so what? That's only 1 million people. Wow still has 10 or 9 million left lol. They'll get that back in a few months. The average person walking into Gamestop for the first time has heard of Wow. But I guarantee they don't know what the hell a "Warhammer" or "Darkfall" is. So guess who's getting the sale? And when they see how easy it is, they are sold. Blizzard made TBC in 2007. WoTLK in 2008. They just have to keep introducing a new expansion each year (which they can cause they don't have to worry about money or lore IP problems) and they'll replenish their base indefinitely.
You are a victim of shortsidedness. A informal Trade chat discussion where 50 people playing a game say "I'm leaving Wow someday" while they are actually PLAYING the game isn't much of anything but time filler on a slow day. Posting this title here is little more than the same thing. Numbers are the only way to gauge anything and Blizzard's are steady and projected. It's always the guy who bored with a game who thinks EVERYONE else is bored to. Again, until those people saying they'll quit do, it's all yakking cause they are boring at that moment.
By comparison, you should have changed the title from "Wow gamers" to "Warhammer gamers". It's more likely after the people seeing that they would be put off for anything for a while after.
After all, over half the people in Warhammer (150k) have actually SEEN the endgame content Mythic provided and quite a bit say they are done with it, and that number is growing faster than people who actually beat WoTLK's endgame and quit. They've seen everything there is to see except the crashy city captures, which is out of theirs, and apparantly Mythic's hands. Wow loses 10%, thats hardly newsworthy. Warhammer loses 10%, that's 30,000 people... more than a lot of their servers combined.
*(disclosure) No, don't play Wow or WoTLK. Not getting it either.
"TO MICHAEL!"
I disagree in one thing, the MMO virgins in WoW are the 70-80 percent and not the 80-90.
That said, i agree with the rest :P
The truth is I can't really expeculate on how much of the population will stop playing MMO once they get tired of WoW. But i think this has to do with the alternatives.
The MMO industry has been growing lately due to one important factor. There is not much else to do.
Going to a bar once a month is more expensive than playing WoW all the month.
Also, if you live in a big city, there isn't really much to do, there are no open spaces to practice sports, and its all full of cars and their exausts, which makes "outside activities" not very apealing.
Remember when WoW released, remember how social we were? Now, how many conversations have you started with a stranger in the last year? in real life and MMO?
I never really knew many WoW players face to face. But the ones I knew were people who would rather do something else with people, but there is no other social activity.
It speaks a lot of our society and we should start listening.
That brings me to the real answer, WoW players will leave wow once they find a new place to hang out. Either that or they will leave because they have lost their liking for socializing.
In the end, I expect players to move on to a game that offers a fresh experience. If we accept that a major part of the WoW playerbase are new MMO players, that would mean they came in for "something new". Then,for them it wasn't like coming into an easier and more convenient EQ but a whole new social and gaming experience. So I'd say their next game would probably be as different from WoW as, say, WoW is different from Diablo II.
Just my guess, but:
I'd say that good amount of the casual, "WoW generation" players will probably move on to other things after WoW. Some of them were non-gamers, some of them were FPS gamers, and others were just the typical console gamer. I'd put money on them going back to those hobbies. It just doesn't seem likely that the genre will stay any where near this size.
Of course, I'll guarantee that a small amount of those MMO virgins are now part of the core crowd and, once they leave WoW for good, will join the rest of us in our endless bitching...
Also, like some one mentioned earlier in the thread, many of these people don't really want to play an MMO in the first place. What they want is an online multiplayer game, probably more along the lines of Diablo or what Hellgate London was supposed to be. Just look at the amount of instancing that people are willing to accept. They're not really worried about having a large, persistant, open game world.
Pfft. I WISH they would leave the genre....but all they do is infest other games when they get bored with WoW for a while (before runnig back of course).
Even games such as WWIIOL aren't immune to them anymore. I had to turn side chat off last night due to Chuck Norris jokes.
They are like cock-roaches...a filthy vermin that can never be truly exterminated.
My opinion would be that the younger crowd who came to WoW as their first MMORPG will have a better chance of sticking around than the startling high number of parents and other "non-gamers" that are subscribed to the game. WoW is a very good example of a blend of hardcore players and complete noobs (not being negative, only literal). But, I would say that for a large number of the crowd, WoW was their version of a gaming one-hit wonder.
I think it will depend on what games developers release. If a new game that is as accessible as WoW is released but was clearly better then I would imagine that a lot of people would desert WoW for it and in addition it would also pick extra subs as well, meaning that it would end up with an even bigger subscriber base than WoW has now (mock this if you want but who would have predicted an mmo with 10m subs 10 years ago). This is what has happened in the past (UO - Everquest - WoW).
I think WoW has ended up picking up such a large amount of subs because it was released at the right time, just when a lot of people got connected to the internet or had come around to idea that it was ok to pay a monthly charge to play a computer game.
Remember that gaming market is increasing all the time and shows no sign of peaking meaning that more and more people are playing games. People coming into their teens and suddenly having money to spend probably are not too impressed with wow as it's 5 years old (when you were 15 would have played a 5 year old game? maybe but in that your case you probably not average).
Another scenario is that several high quality games will be released and the subscriber base will be split between them but will still total higher than WoW.
If nothing good is released within the next decade - ugggh I'm not even going there, 5 years is too long as it is.
Whatever happens sooner or later WoW will lose it's popularity, whether or not this will take a long time depends on what other games are released. In any case I cannot see the total numbers of subs ever diminishing unless a new business model comes along and renders the notion of subs obsolete.
I think what at least some part of the WoW audience is looking for is a Myspace or Facebook with avatars that you can run around with and interact with but not on a large scale.
I'm looking at some of the trends in the MMO industry and see "auto pilot" options that lead you to where you need to go and back again. Pretty soon all you'll have is Ironforge where you talk to an NPC he'll tell you to kill X, you do a 180 degree turn and kill whatever it is that needs to die and then talk to npc again to get your awesome mount that you'll parade in this Ironforge so that the other people will ask where they got it so that they can give the obligatory "L2P Noob" response and feel superrior.
Ok that's a bit off topic but I see the majority of WoW players going on to whatever other game Blizzard pumps out in the future. I'm willing to bet that when Star Craft 2 comes out you'll see a dent in the WoW fanbase. Then you can take it a step further when Diablo 3 comes out because it will give them the endless gear grind that they're after where they get to max level, then kill whatever boss there happens to be over and over for that special sword of maming or axe of murdering that looks "pimp" in the chat channel. This is especially going to be true if Diablo 3 folows it's predecessor and stays free to play where the only investment is the box price at Future Shop. Sure a small part of the people will move on to other MMO's but those were MMO players before WoW and they'll stay that way long after it. I can see those people having a modem built into their casket
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
Most WoW players will leave when WoW vanishes. A few will trickle over into good games. The reason WoW has so many subs is because it caters to people who don't play games.
Darkfall Travelogues!
I dunno about the %'s the OP pulls out of wherever but, I don't think it matters much. Look, the mmo genre is growing just like gaming in general is growing. Is there a part of me that wishes all the nintendo kiddies would all just slowly crawl back under the rocks where they came from? Sure. Or how about all those people whose first bout of gaming involved the shallow pathetic excuse for an RPG called Final Fantasy (ducks the poo being flung by fanbots)? Again, sure. I do know, however, that they are all here to stay. For better or worse just like reality TV shows, Jerry Springer, and intolerant leftists preaching tolerance and condemning all those who do not think precisely like them.
They will try other games, then they will go back to wow and the next expansion pack. I think Champions Online and Star Trek Online will all draw a pretty sizeable gathering at launch, not to mention The Old Republic. A good number may disappear for a few months with the release of Diablo 3, but they'll be back. Plus, Blizzard is working away on a new MMO (I still say it's a Star Craft MMO because of the cancellation of Star Craft Ghost) which will draw all those folks plus a couple million more.
I know after Ultima Online got old for me I dropped out for a couple years but SWG drew me in and I continue looking for the game that will capture the magic of both of those (maybe Earthrise?) by playing most everything that comes out. I would say a bunch of folks are pretty similar to myself.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
I once see a report saying that only 2% of the WOW players actually raid. Now is probably higher but still. I am a pretty dedicated player (a serious casual?) and i have only done the new raid dugeon once on a PUG group. It will be a long time before i exhaust any content and i have only ONE L80 toon. Just player my other lower level alts will last for a LONG time (definitely till the next expansion).
My brother & his wife also played and they are only up to L35-40 .. and they have been playing for months. There are A LOT of casual players in WOW who will never truly exhaust the content (or take a long time).
But even a long time is not infinite. My guess is that Blizzard knows that and they are actively preparing the next MMO to capture the quitting playings.
But i do agree that WOW has a LOT of life in it. I would say at least 2-3 more expansion packs, if not more.
I agree. Based on my own experiences on my old server most of the players there didnt grasp the concept that they were playing an MMO. Mention SWG in chat and 99% will ask what does SWG mean. And the next game on their radar isnt TOR or Star Trek or Darkfall, its Diablo 3. Mention that Diablo 3 isnt an MMO and the response is "so what"
Not that Im against Diablo 3, Ill be playing it as well. But its not an MMO and wont be replacing MMO gaming for me. The players on my server at least just dont make the distinction between MMO and a multiplayer experience.
My gut instinct says those 8 million newb MMO players dont go to another MMO home once WoW declines (dont flip out fanbois, Im not saying thats happening anytime soon although it did happen for my guild and me). Two reasons....
They didnt come to wow in the first place because it is an MMO
There really isnt a decent clone of WoW.
The one possible darkhorse here is The Old Republic. Its name and IP recognition could bring in the same non-mmo crowd that WoW did. If its as easy and marketed as well as WoW was it could provide a home for those millions that eventually leave WoW.
Otherwise there is no alternative to WoW so theyd be likely to return to their roots, consoles, multiplayer Diablo 3 stuff, etc.
Just my opinion of course. And thanks for the responses, some interesting points to consider here
Interesting topic. I've always said that just because there are 12 million WoW players doesn't mean there are 12 million mmorpg players. This is why mmorpg developers shouldn't be hoping to compete with WoW or beat WoW at it's own game. Two big games launched in 2008--AoC and WAR. AoC is an outright failure but it's looking like even WAR isn't getting nearly the number of players that its creators were hoping for. The biggest reason for this is that AoC and WAR play almost exactly like WoW and people that are currently happy with and playing WoW aren't looking to leave.
Just based on my own experience every person I know who left WoW to play either game is now back in WoW.
Hi. I'm Capn23. I left WoW for WAR and then WAR for AoC.
Now you know someone
I think the only reason that WAR is hanging on to it's numbers is because it had a better launch than AoC. AoC is more different than WAR when it comes to WoW. WAR...in my personal opinion...is a bad version of WoW with buggy keep sieges and public quests and dyes. The only really innovative thing to come from WAR was the Public Quest, which I have to admit was a pretty cool idea, but in my opinion there were too many and they were not epic enough. AoC has innovative combat and graphics. In my opinion the combat is revolutionary and future MMOs should seriously consider using this system. They've almost perfected it now that the combos are shorter.
The graphics speak for themselves. Some people may not enjoy the art style, but the graphics themselves are one step forward for the industry.
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Guys! I'm hopelessly lost in a mountain of mole hills! Them damn moles!