I dont believe for a second WoW will die in the coming years.
However, i have to agree with the OP, I'm noticing servers going emptier by the bit, everyone seems to level to 80, quit, or continue raiding and then quit.
There might be more new players coming in then players quitting, but that doesn't change the fact some servers are going empty and dead.
Actually I would be very surprised if Blizzard announce a decline in number of subs. WoW is a cultural phenomenon and the ball just keeps on rolling. It doesn't matter if the game suck donkeyballs(which it don't), the game would still go strong. It's like top10 music. Most people over 30 know it's massproduced crap but that kinda music is still strong allthough WoW is anything but massproduced. It's all the copycats around that's that. Anyway, WoW will continue to grow. 100 vets drop the game and a 1000 nubs take their place - doesn't matter...
games are slightly different simply because when a game is produced it is essentially a snapshot aimed at whatever tech is available to play it on at the time . they tend to have a short ish shelf life in comparission with other entertainment media . i agree warcraft does nt suck . its seen better days but its still a pretty good mmo . i dont know if your suggesting warcraft can keep up this level of subsribers for years and maybe decades to come because given the way the games market works that would highly unlikly if not impossible . every year that passes warcraft looks more outdated . all it will take is a decent game with better graphics to come along and the cultural phenomenon will shift . warcrafts owes its populalarity to a lack of competition as much as decent gameplay . if say aion delivers the goods ( who knows if it will or not ) and is playable on the majority of mid range pcs suddenly warcraft will seam old hat . and those hundred vets and 1000 nubs will have something else to spend thier money on .
that kind of change in the mmo demographic could be pretty rapid when it happens .
Yes, WoW will one day die, but I think it will be a slow death, over a multitude of years slowly draining subs to other, newer and lets not forget better mmo's. I think WoW will end up like UO is today, if not Blizzard pull the plug before that, a few hardcore fans keeping it alive.
Wow another year, another bunch of mystical fortune tellers telling us how wow will die, and fall. What is it this time more hyped up games?? Oh yes it must be that time of the year again, the lunatics have been let out of the future to tell us about the enxt big games that will crush wow, and how wow will fall. NESFLASH, people on this iste keep saying wow will die and will be killed by this and that for years. Only need to to look at the last overhyped game, and the crap that the idiots used to spew on this site. "War wil have 1 million subs by the launch. "War will have 10 millions subs" "War is going to crush wow" This was only for the lats overhyped game, I could name many more.
Well cya next year, when wow is still the top game. The fact that half you morons seem to forget, wow is going stronger than ever, and it hasnt even launched in china lol. 500k subs since wotlk launched, and probably growing. Wow another year, another bunch of mystical fortune tellers telling us how wow will die, and fall. What is it this time more hyped up games?? Oh yes it must be that time of the year again, the lunatics have been let out of the future to tell us about the enxt big games that will crush wow, and how wow will fall. NESFLASH, people on this iste keep saying wow will die and will be killed by this and that for years. Only need to to look at the last overhyped game, and the crap that the idiots used to spew on this site. "War wil have 1 million subs by the launch. "War will have 10 millions subs" "War is going to crush wow" This was only for the lats overhyped game, I could name many more.
Well cya next year, when wow is still the top game. The fact that half you morons seem to forget, wow is going stronger than ever, and it hasnt even launched in china lol. 500k subs since wotlk launched, and probably growing.
The fanboys are painfully obvious, someone should put this one on a leash.
It always warms my heart when I see signs of high intellectual capacity such as this one, where arrogance and patronizing tones are a beacon of intelligence. First off, did you even bother to read the subject and content of the OP's post?
It has NOTHING to do with WoW dying or competing with other games! If you actually read it, you'd realize the topic was about a generally noticeable drop in the player base through the natural process of declining interest due to the game's age and the apparent lack of long term challenges and goals. Once again, NOTHING to do with dying or having to worry about new and past MMO's stealing from the playerbase.
And if you are going to come on here and instead of intelligently debating why the game is the second coming of Jesus, you start calling everyone an idiot and moron for blasphemously suggesting that the game may have reached its pinnacle and may be on the decline, just remember you're making yourself out to be just as "idiotic and moronic" as you consider us to be.
..:: Sappin' sentries in TF2 till I can find me a new MMO ::..
thank you arkos . i also wish they would read whats actually said . i think i went out my way to make it clear in no way do i think wow will die anytime soon . in fact if they did read my posts i actually think wow will see its tenth birthday and proberbly will last beyond that .
i also state i actually like wow . i do think think blizzard have made some bad choices and the game currently is in a bit of a rut but as fantasy mmos go it still pretty good but it is starting to look and feel a little dated now . personally i m finding it a little dull now because things are a little too easy .
i would nt spend a lot of gold getting a decent epic from the auction house because i know i can get something a lot better by spending a few hours in the bgs or doing an instance .
half the fun in mmos is having a goal you want to reach . to make those goals increasingly easier to obtain defeafs the object .
i mean i know theres new epic gear available through the arenas but the game loses something when everyone spends so much time doing that or the battlegrounds or instances .
I have noticed a slight decrease in activity, especially in the open world (cities, instances, BGs, etc, are still busy). However, I'm not sure if this is due to people quitting the game, or people just not playing as often as they used to. Surprisingly, it now seems like people play more on the weekends instead of week nights. This used to be reversed back in the day. Maybe it's the economy? Perhaps people just don't have the money for big expensive weekends, so they stay home and play WoW, and do other things during the week.
As to WoW's ultimate demise, I think some very minor cracks in the foundation have formed over the last few months. I know season 5 (the first season of WotLK in which pallies and DKs were incredibly overpowered) had a rather demoralizing effect on a big chunk of the player population. Blizzard did admit around a 60% drop in arena participation during that time!
Since I gave up PvPing (at least for gear) in WoW quite a while ago, I didn't experience any of this firsthand, but from what I gather, it was just way too difficult for most classes to compete. Some vital pieces of gear apparently had an outrageous arena rating requirement. Combine that with easier instances and some PvP gear now available through PvE, and you've got a lot of disenfranchised players.
All of my real life friends and coworkers who were hardcore WoW PvPers (and HC players of other MMOs like EVE) left the game to play Streetfighter 4! They even have monthly tournaments live and in person at big parties. Having been to some of these recently, they've really brought me back to my arcade days as a kid, and you realize just how big of a joke MMO PvP is. Sorry, guys, but MMO PvP is a joke (except for the occasional bits here and there which are usually random and not part of any system), and if you think other MMOs will destroy WoW, think again. Other totally non-related games will likely be the ones to chip away at it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to sound harsh. WoW is a great game, and the only MMO I can really stand. I've always been a fan of Blizzard and am really looking forward to Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, and the new MMO. I think WoW has a good 3 expansions left before it dies. I have a feeling the subscription rate will continue to rise for the time being (probably a little slower at this point with the occasional burst like an expansion or new foreign market) but at some point there's going to be a mass exodus from the game. Not because of some other MMO, but just because everyone will psychologically agree that it's time to move on. Hopefully Blizzard has a last expansion planned (Sargeras anyone?) and can say "this is it, it's over" instead of just letting the game die slowly. The best TV series usually ended like this instead of overstaying their welcome.
Blizzard games are played by anyone, MMORPGs are played by MMORPG players. Aio will be played by MMORPG players, so no, I don't believe there is much concern of losing a large chunk of subscribers to an unknown IP like that.
This year, numbers will most likely still grow, but next year, well next year is a new year and we can have this same guessing game all over again, eventually the year when WoW starts losing subsribers will come, the trick is to know what year that will be.
SWOTOR can still suck and be niche, Star Trek too, Jumpgate will be a niche, number of MMOs will be cancelled and their engines sold, anyone remembers Hero's Jurney?
Hey, Belle here. Full time mom of 3. Married to Dwayne. Moved to the US some years ago. Love it! "Forget the unwritten, uncollected works of the poet You never were." - a song lyric from Saetia, my fave band in the world.
I believe that WotLK is not out in China, yet. Once they get the WoW-China problem under control and get it out into China, there will definitely be an increase in Chinese players. However Europe and America subs have always fluctuated and slowly grown and sometimes even declined. Here are some numbers I got off http://www.mmogchart.com :
January 2007 (US) - 2 Million
January 2007 (EU) - 1.5 Million
January 2008 (US) - 2.5 Million
January 2008 (EU) - 2 Million
As I don't have numbers for the past year, but I will as well show Asian MMO numbers in the same time frame:
January 2007 (Asia) - 4.5 Million
January 2008 (Asia) - 5.5 Million
We might see declines in the Korean and Japanese markets, but China will more than make up for it, and to think WoW is going anywhere anytime soon is very premature. EverQuest did not start massively decline until the release of EverQuest II and it might just take until Blizzard's unnamed, but semi-announced MMORPG to be released before we see substantial decline in the subscrition numbers of WoW.
I don't agree at all. There was a new pve server opened 4 months ago and it has already reached around 20k characters on that realm alone. I think that any noticable drop is down to rerolls, migrations or free moves. A lot of realms got free transfers to Mag and Silvermoon recently.. And there is a hell of a ton of players that rerolled Death Knights on realms of their choices (note better realms) so you might just have experienced some bad luck. I also know lots of people who quit playing but they all went back due to boredom anyway... (there are no other games really)
That's a pretty interesting statement. That there are "no other games". It is true, no other game like WoW, I suppose. Most MMOs try to be innovative and have a unique feature, while WoW just copies features, polishes them and simplifies them. There are other MMOs out there. EverQuest II, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Lineage II, EVE Online. All of these are much more "hardcore" and not as "user-friendly" and "easy-mode" as World of Warcraft.
I would hardly say there aren't other games, they might have got bored because not every game gives you easy raiding, easy leveling and easy and boring crafting. You could say that I played WoW for four years, so how could that be the case? I would say that three years of the game, I hated it, but I like to play with people I know. I don't care about that anymore, and I think if more people were willing to stomach more challening games the MMO market wouldn't be so bland.
Have canceled my sub after 4 years or so of playing, WoW has become somewhat stale to some ppl and that will def cause a bit of a drop in population, also there are a few MMOs coming out later this year.
This wont be anything even noticeable tho, blizz will continue to lead the market for another few years, I will most certainly come back for an expansion and more likely than not for their new MMO
I have heard that Blizz sold itself to Activision.
Could someone confirm/disprove this. and not with a yes/no.
i would like a real link or a direction to see for it myself if this is true.
regardless, the bulk of org WoW creators havent worked for blizzard in years.
If i am incorrect on any of this correct me. but this is the info i have gathered.
also. alot of people who quit 'playing' WoW do not stop 'paying' for it until they find a game they like better. in alot of cases the just return and blizzard never notices.
me. i have discovered a love for EQ2 and don't plan to be bored by WoW again until Arthas is actually in the game.
making a point and haveing a point aren't really the same thing. I was more commenting on the fact that you rambled for a good bit about nothing after you asked a question that has been common knowledge for a while.
I have heard that Blizz sold itself to Activision. Could someone confirm/disprove this. and not with a yes/no. i would like a real link or a direction to see for it myself if this is true. regardless, the bulk of org WoW creators havent worked for blizzard in years. If i am incorrect on any of this correct me. but this is the info i have gathered. also. alot of people who quit 'playing' WoW do not stop 'paying' for it until they find a game they like better. in alot of cases the just return and blizzard never notices. me. i have discovered a love for EQ2 and don't plan to be bored by WoW again until Arthas is actually in the game.
No, Activision did not buy Blizzard and Blizzard did not buy Activision. Both gaming companies are owned by Vivendi Universal, which is a corporation of sorts based in France. They merely merged to give easier access to larger database of information and goods, I assume. To think Blizzard sold themselves to Activision is completely out of this world. Why would a billion-dollar company get bought by a smaller company?
Have canceled my sub after 4 years or so of playing, WoW has become somewhat stale to some ppl and that will def cause a bit of a drop in population, also there are a few MMOs coming out later this year. This wont be anything even noticeable tho, blizz will continue to lead the market for another few years, I will most certainly come back for an expansion and more likely than not for their new MMO
almost undoubedly blizzard will be the market leader . i dont think there will be a so called wowkiller . but personally i would nt want to see one . i would like to see good competition . worst case scenario in the next couple of years would see blizzard lose half of there currrent subs i think . it would still even then be an incredibly lurcrative game . what would be nice to see is a new game come along that actually expanded the mmo experiance . its not written in stone that only 20-30 million people or whatever it is that play mmos now should nt increase once there are some mmos that offer a multplayer experiance that rivals wow or betters it ( one thats not a niche game , i know there are games that do offer a great mmo experiance out there but dont have the mass appeal wow does ) . my gut feeling is the drop by the end of this year will be around 1-2 million . wow is undoubedly becoming a little stale now and you get the feeling a lot of players would have jumped ship already if there had only been a ship worthy of jumping too . after all theres a lot of titanics out there .
opps did nt they say the titanic was unsinkable ( seams like we ve come to think the same of warcraft lol )
I don't agree at all. There was a new pve server opened 4 months ago and it has already reached around 20k characters on that realm alone. I think that any noticable drop is down to rerolls, migrations or free moves. A lot of realms got free transfers to Mag and Silvermoon recently.. And there is a hell of a ton of players that rerolled Death Knights on realms of their choices (note better realms) so you might just have experienced some bad luck. I also know lots of people who quit playing but they all went back due to boredom anyway... (there are no other games really)
That's a pretty interesting statement. That there are "no other games". It is true, no other game like WoW, I suppose. Most MMOs try to be innovative and have a unique feature, while WoW just copies features, polishes them and simplifies them. There are other MMOs out there. EverQuest II, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Lineage II, EVE Online. All of these are much more "hardcore" and not as "user-friendly" and "easy-mode" as World of Warcraft.
I would hardly say there aren't other games, they might have got bored because not every game gives you easy raiding, easy leveling and easy and boring crafting. You could say that I played WoW for four years, so how could that be the case? I would say that three years of the game, I hated it, but I like to play with people I know. I don't care about that anymore, and I think if more people were willing to stomach more challening games the MMO market wouldn't be so bland.
I find your statement of "the people" being the blame of the poor MMO market at the moment far more interesting. Its even more interesting to read how you played it for years while hating it, simply because people you know were playing it as well. I'd look in the mirror first, before you start flaming down the people that simply like the game still.
World of Warcraft will lose subscribers no doubt. But not because of any reasons presented above. They are all speculated and have very little merit. The main reason is comming somewhere else.
We recently heard of the termination of Blizzard contract with The9, the Chinese operators of Word of Warcraft. The contract is now change to NetEase, another online gaming giant in China. Nobody knows the real truth behind the switch except those really involves in it. Sideline information seems to think that NetEase was playing a lot of dirty tricks and offer Blizzard a huge huge benefits/advantages. Some also think Blizzard pulled the plug because EA was invested in The9. There are several other reasons floating around including The9 wasn't a very good operator.
Now, here come the bad new for Blizzard. When an online game switchs operators like that, the players will be affected. Chinese WoW players are restlest. Anyone could understand that. If one day in the US, World of Wacraft got transferred to operate by SOE, anyone playing WoW in the US would be socked too. The result is the mentality of wait and see. With the business model in China, you only buy the game card for a certain amount of time you can redeem in the game. The card you buy works for any game of the same operator. It is easy to just stop playing WoW for a while to wait for things to settle down. And that's exactly what Chinese players are doing.
Of couse, they can always come back, but here's the bad new. AION released in China. Hell, in this tumor time for WoW, if Shanda and NCSoft don't take advantage to kick Blizzard in the pee pee, they should not exist in the business anymore. The result? AION is growing with a record speed. We all talk about WoW killer here, WoW killer there, but nobody realizes that to kill WoW, bring it to the #2 MMORPG, the battle has to be fought elsewhere not in the US or EU. US and EU are unfortunately the minority in the subscribers of WoW. The real battles are Korea and China. These 2 regions accounted for 2/3 of WoW subscribers or more. Now, AION already won in Korea. It beats the crap out of WOTLK in Korea for more than 6 months now. And the Blizzard GODS just gave NCSoft a golden chance to kick their ass in China.
If that's not enough bad new for Blizzard, here comes another one. Arcording to Chinese law, when a foreign company comes in to a dispute with a local company. The product of that foreign company may be banned from China. A few days ago, The9, the ex-operator for WoW sued Blizzard in the Shanghai court. The reason was Blizzard employees "damaged" 2 servers of The9 in the process and comercial defamation.
Now, in addition to the competition from NCSoft AION, WoW could be banned forever in China. Talk about another sock to the whole China WoW players. If that happen, it will be a holy shit for Blizzard. With WoW losing at least half of it subscribers, we can all safe to say "hail to the new king of MMORPG - AION".
I fully expect wow subs to decline significantly in the coming months. That being said, however, there's no way that blizzard is going to announce this.
As long as www.xfire.com is available all lies are easely countered.
More than 60% marketshare of MMO's in the west )) including free to play MMO games:
I fully expect wow subs to decline significantly in the coming months. That being said, however, there's no way that blizzard is going to announce this.
As long as www.xfire.com is available all lies are easely countered.
More than 60% marketshare of MMO's in the west )) including free to play MMO games:
That's 60% guys. )) Where does your game stand ? )))
Do we now get to argue about the inherent problems in xfire stats?
Can't we ban xfire stats from even coming into the conversation? Ahh... what a wonderful world it would be...
YEP ... Pity that 250.000 to 300.000 PC users constantly on line are a much better sample than the 250 logged in users on www.mmorpg.com of what is being played. (those 300K on line represent 13.000.000 registrated ones btw.)
That must be very frustrating for Wow haters )))
Ok, but what can you tell me of the demographics of xfire users? What type of player are they? Age? Sex? I won't bother giving you a lesson on Statistics, but without understanding the demographics you'll never be able to intelligently interpret data.
Comments
Too busy playing Free Realms to care.
I dont believe for a second WoW will die in the coming years.
However, i have to agree with the OP, I'm noticing servers going emptier by the bit, everyone seems to level to 80, quit, or continue raiding and then quit.
There might be more new players coming in then players quitting, but that doesn't change the fact some servers are going empty and dead.
I dont know how accurate http://www.warcraftrealms.com/eu_realmstats.php is ( Shows server population )
But If It's accurate you can see that some servers arn't doing well.
games are slightly different simply because when a game is produced it is essentially a snapshot aimed at whatever tech is available to play it on at the time . they tend to have a short ish shelf life in comparission with other entertainment media . i agree warcraft does nt suck . its seen better days but its still a pretty good mmo . i dont know if your suggesting warcraft can keep up this level of subsribers for years and maybe decades to come because given the way the games market works that would highly unlikly if not impossible . every year that passes warcraft looks more outdated . all it will take is a decent game with better graphics to come along and the cultural phenomenon will shift . warcrafts owes its populalarity to a lack of competition as much as decent gameplay . if say aion delivers the goods ( who knows if it will or not ) and is playable on the majority of mid range pcs suddenly warcraft will seam old hat . and those hundred vets and 1000 nubs will have something else to spend thier money on .
that kind of change in the mmo demographic could be pretty rapid when it happens .
Yes, WoW will one day die, but I think it will be a slow death, over a multitude of years slowly draining subs to other, newer and lets not forget better mmo's. I think WoW will end up like UO is today, if not Blizzard pull the plug before that, a few hardcore fans keeping it alive.
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Grammar nazi's. This one is for you.
The fanboys are painfully obvious, someone should put this one on a leash.
It always warms my heart when I see signs of high intellectual capacity such as this one, where arrogance and patronizing tones are a beacon of intelligence. First off, did you even bother to read the subject and content of the OP's post?
It has NOTHING to do with WoW dying or competing with other games! If you actually read it, you'd realize the topic was about a generally noticeable drop in the player base through the natural process of declining interest due to the game's age and the apparent lack of long term challenges and goals. Once again, NOTHING to do with dying or having to worry about new and past MMO's stealing from the playerbase.
And if you are going to come on here and instead of intelligently debating why the game is the second coming of Jesus, you start calling everyone an idiot and moron for blasphemously suggesting that the game may have reached its pinnacle and may be on the decline, just remember you're making yourself out to be just as "idiotic and moronic" as you consider us to be.
..:: Sappin' sentries in TF2 till I can find me a new MMO ::..
thank you arkos . i also wish they would read whats actually said . i think i went out my way to make it clear in no way do i think wow will die anytime soon . in fact if they did read my posts i actually think wow will see its tenth birthday and proberbly will last beyond that .
i also state i actually like wow . i do think think blizzard have made some bad choices and the game currently is in a bit of a rut but as fantasy mmos go it still pretty good but it is starting to look and feel a little dated now . personally i m finding it a little dull now because things are a little too easy .
i would nt spend a lot of gold getting a decent epic from the auction house because i know i can get something a lot better by spending a few hours in the bgs or doing an instance .
half the fun in mmos is having a goal you want to reach . to make those goals increasingly easier to obtain defeafs the object .
i mean i know theres new epic gear available through the arenas but the game loses something when everyone spends so much time doing that or the battlegrounds or instances .
INCOMING WALL OF TEXT
I have noticed a slight decrease in activity, especially in the open world (cities, instances, BGs, etc, are still busy). However, I'm not sure if this is due to people quitting the game, or people just not playing as often as they used to. Surprisingly, it now seems like people play more on the weekends instead of week nights. This used to be reversed back in the day. Maybe it's the economy? Perhaps people just don't have the money for big expensive weekends, so they stay home and play WoW, and do other things during the week.
As to WoW's ultimate demise, I think some very minor cracks in the foundation have formed over the last few months. I know season 5 (the first season of WotLK in which pallies and DKs were incredibly overpowered) had a rather demoralizing effect on a big chunk of the player population. Blizzard did admit around a 60% drop in arena participation during that time!
Since I gave up PvPing (at least for gear) in WoW quite a while ago, I didn't experience any of this firsthand, but from what I gather, it was just way too difficult for most classes to compete. Some vital pieces of gear apparently had an outrageous arena rating requirement. Combine that with easier instances and some PvP gear now available through PvE, and you've got a lot of disenfranchised players.
All of my real life friends and coworkers who were hardcore WoW PvPers (and HC players of other MMOs like EVE) left the game to play Streetfighter 4! They even have monthly tournaments live and in person at big parties. Having been to some of these recently, they've really brought me back to my arcade days as a kid, and you realize just how big of a joke MMO PvP is. Sorry, guys, but MMO PvP is a joke (except for the occasional bits here and there which are usually random and not part of any system), and if you think other MMOs will destroy WoW, think again. Other totally non-related games will likely be the ones to chip away at it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to sound harsh. WoW is a great game, and the only MMO I can really stand. I've always been a fan of Blizzard and am really looking forward to Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, and the new MMO. I think WoW has a good 3 expansions left before it dies. I have a feeling the subscription rate will continue to rise for the time being (probably a little slower at this point with the occasional burst like an expansion or new foreign market) but at some point there's going to be a mass exodus from the game. Not because of some other MMO, but just because everyone will psychologically agree that it's time to move on. Hopefully Blizzard has a last expansion planned (Sargeras anyone?) and can say "this is it, it's over" instead of just letting the game die slowly. The best TV series usually ended like this instead of overstaying their welcome.
Blizzard games are played by anyone, MMORPGs are played by MMORPG players. Aio will be played by MMORPG players, so no, I don't believe there is much concern of losing a large chunk of subscribers to an unknown IP like that.
This year, numbers will most likely still grow, but next year, well next year is a new year and we can have this same guessing game all over again, eventually the year when WoW starts losing subsribers will come, the trick is to know what year that will be.
SWOTOR can still suck and be niche, Star Trek too, Jumpgate will be a niche, number of MMOs will be cancelled and their engines sold, anyone remembers Hero's Jurney?
xx
"Forget the unwritten, uncollected works of the poet
You never were." - a song lyric from Saetia, my fave band in the world.
I believe that WotLK is not out in China, yet. Once they get the WoW-China problem under control and get it out into China, there will definitely be an increase in Chinese players. However Europe and America subs have always fluctuated and slowly grown and sometimes even declined. Here are some numbers I got off http://www.mmogchart.com :
January 2007 (US) - 2 Million
January 2007 (EU) - 1.5 Million
January 2008 (US) - 2.5 Million
January 2008 (EU) - 2 Million
As I don't have numbers for the past year, but I will as well show Asian MMO numbers in the same time frame:
January 2007 (Asia) - 4.5 Million
January 2008 (Asia) - 5.5 Million
We might see declines in the Korean and Japanese markets, but China will more than make up for it, and to think WoW is going anywhere anytime soon is very premature. EverQuest did not start massively decline until the release of EverQuest II and it might just take until Blizzard's unnamed, but semi-announced MMORPG to be released before we see substantial decline in the subscrition numbers of WoW.
That's a pretty interesting statement. That there are "no other games". It is true, no other game like WoW, I suppose. Most MMOs try to be innovative and have a unique feature, while WoW just copies features, polishes them and simplifies them. There are other MMOs out there. EverQuest II, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Lineage II, EVE Online. All of these are much more "hardcore" and not as "user-friendly" and "easy-mode" as World of Warcraft.
I would hardly say there aren't other games, they might have got bored because not every game gives you easy raiding, easy leveling and easy and boring crafting. You could say that I played WoW for four years, so how could that be the case? I would say that three years of the game, I hated it, but I like to play with people I know. I don't care about that anymore, and I think if more people were willing to stomach more challening games the MMO market wouldn't be so bland.
Have canceled my sub after 4 years or so of playing, WoW has become somewhat stale to some ppl and that will def cause a bit of a drop in population, also there are a few MMOs coming out later this year.
This wont be anything even noticeable tho, blizz will continue to lead the market for another few years, I will most certainly come back for an expansion and more likely than not for their new MMO
I have heard that Blizz sold itself to Activision.
Could someone confirm/disprove this. and not with a yes/no.
i would like a real link or a direction to see for it myself if this is true.
regardless, the bulk of org WoW creators havent worked for blizzard in years.
If i am incorrect on any of this correct me. but this is the info i have gathered.
also. alot of people who quit 'playing' WoW do not stop 'paying' for it until they find a game they like better. in alot of cases the just return and blizzard never notices.
me. i have discovered a love for EQ2 and don't plan to be bored by WoW again until Arthas is actually in the game.
www.activisionblizzard.com
old news is old.
you didn't make a single point in your post.
old devs might be gone but new devs are the ones with the 11 million sub game.
if you were reffering to me not having a point in my post....
yes it did.
the point was the question i asked. seems you linked it for me further confirming that it 'did' have a point. my question was answered.
my post was not ment to sway an opinion . i was asking a question.
i had no idea such simple things were so hard to grasp.
but you get a cookie anyway. please line up with the rest of the idiots.
making a point and haveing a point aren't really the same thing. I was more commenting on the fact that you rambled for a good bit about nothing after you asked a question that has been common knowledge for a while.
cept i haven't flown off the handle, failed to make any points, or rambled about nothing yet. Im still in control of my posting.
No, Activision did not buy Blizzard and Blizzard did not buy Activision. Both gaming companies are owned by Vivendi Universal, which is a corporation of sorts based in France. They merely merged to give easier access to larger database of information and goods, I assume. To think Blizzard sold themselves to Activision is completely out of this world. Why would a billion-dollar company get bought by a smaller company?
almost undoubedly blizzard will be the market leader . i dont think there will be a so called wowkiller . but personally i would nt want to see one . i would like to see good competition . worst case scenario in the next couple of years would see blizzard lose half of there currrent subs i think . it would still even then be an incredibly lurcrative game . what would be nice to see is a new game come along that actually expanded the mmo experiance . its not written in stone that only 20-30 million people or whatever it is that play mmos now should nt increase once there are some mmos that offer a multplayer experiance that rivals wow or betters it ( one thats not a niche game , i know there are games that do offer a great mmo experiance out there but dont have the mass appeal wow does ) . my gut feeling is the drop by the end of this year will be around 1-2 million . wow is undoubedly becoming a little stale now and you get the feeling a lot of players would have jumped ship already if there had only been a ship worthy of jumping too . after all theres a lot of titanics out there .
opps did nt they say the titanic was unsinkable ( seams like we ve come to think the same of warcraft lol )
i guess its only my imagination making me have to wait hours in the queue then ;(
thread #43523463 about the same pointless topic.
That's a pretty interesting statement. That there are "no other games". It is true, no other game like WoW, I suppose. Most MMOs try to be innovative and have a unique feature, while WoW just copies features, polishes them and simplifies them. There are other MMOs out there. EverQuest II, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Lineage II, EVE Online. All of these are much more "hardcore" and not as "user-friendly" and "easy-mode" as World of Warcraft.
I would hardly say there aren't other games, they might have got bored because not every game gives you easy raiding, easy leveling and easy and boring crafting. You could say that I played WoW for four years, so how could that be the case? I would say that three years of the game, I hated it, but I like to play with people I know. I don't care about that anymore, and I think if more people were willing to stomach more challening games the MMO market wouldn't be so bland.
I find your statement of "the people" being the blame of the poor MMO market at the moment far more interesting. Its even more interesting to read how you played it for years while hating it, simply because people you know were playing it as well. I'd look in the mirror first, before you start flaming down the people that simply like the game still.
World of Warcraft will lose subscribers no doubt. But not because of any reasons presented above. They are all speculated and have very little merit. The main reason is comming somewhere else.
We recently heard of the termination of Blizzard contract with The9, the Chinese operators of Word of Warcraft. The contract is now change to NetEase, another online gaming giant in China. Nobody knows the real truth behind the switch except those really involves in it. Sideline information seems to think that NetEase was playing a lot of dirty tricks and offer Blizzard a huge huge benefits/advantages. Some also think Blizzard pulled the plug because EA was invested in The9. There are several other reasons floating around including The9 wasn't a very good operator.
Now, here come the bad new for Blizzard. When an online game switchs operators like that, the players will be affected. Chinese WoW players are restlest. Anyone could understand that. If one day in the US, World of Wacraft got transferred to operate by SOE, anyone playing WoW in the US would be socked too. The result is the mentality of wait and see. With the business model in China, you only buy the game card for a certain amount of time you can redeem in the game. The card you buy works for any game of the same operator. It is easy to just stop playing WoW for a while to wait for things to settle down. And that's exactly what Chinese players are doing.
Of couse, they can always come back, but here's the bad new. AION released in China. Hell, in this tumor time for WoW, if Shanda and NCSoft don't take advantage to kick Blizzard in the pee pee, they should not exist in the business anymore. The result? AION is growing with a record speed. We all talk about WoW killer here, WoW killer there, but nobody realizes that to kill WoW, bring it to the #2 MMORPG, the battle has to be fought elsewhere not in the US or EU. US and EU are unfortunately the minority in the subscribers of WoW. The real battles are Korea and China. These 2 regions accounted for 2/3 of WoW subscribers or more. Now, AION already won in Korea. It beats the crap out of WOTLK in Korea for more than 6 months now. And the Blizzard GODS just gave NCSoft a golden chance to kick their ass in China.
If that's not enough bad new for Blizzard, here comes another one. Arcording to Chinese law, when a foreign company comes in to a dispute with a local company. The product of that foreign company may be banned from China. A few days ago, The9, the ex-operator for WoW sued Blizzard in the Shanghai court. The reason was Blizzard employees "damaged" 2 servers of The9 in the process and comercial defamation.
Now, in addition to the competition from NCSoft AION, WoW could be banned forever in China. Talk about another sock to the whole China WoW players. If that happen, it will be a holy shit for Blizzard. With WoW losing at least half of it subscribers, we can all safe to say "hail to the new king of MMORPG - AION".
I fully expect wow subs to decline significantly in the coming months.
That being said, however, there's no way that blizzard is going to announce this.
As long as www.xfire.com is available all lies are easely countered.
More than 60% marketshare of MMO's in the west
)) including free to play MMO games:
http://www.xfire.com/genre/mmo/massively_multiplayer_online/
That's 60% guys.
)) Where does your game stand ? 
)))
Do we now get to argue about the inherent problems in xfire stats?
Can't we ban xfire stats from even coming into the conversation? Ahh... what a wonderful world it would be...
As long as www.xfire.com is available all lies are easely countered.
More than 60% marketshare of MMO's in the west
)) including free to play MMO games:
http://www.xfire.com/genre/mmo/massively_multiplayer_online/
That's 60% guys.
)) Where does your game stand ? 
)))
Do we now get to argue about the inherent problems in xfire stats?
Can't we ban xfire stats from even coming into the conversation? Ahh... what a wonderful world it would be...
YEP ... Pity that 250.000 to 300.000 PC users constantly on line are a much better sample than the 250 logged in users on www.mmorpg.com of what is being played. (those 300K on line represent 13.000.000 registrated ones btw.)
That must be very frustrating for Wow haters
)))
Ok, but what can you tell me of the demographics of xfire users? What type of player are they? Age? Sex? I won't bother giving you a lesson on Statistics, but without understanding the demographics you'll never be able to intelligently interpret data.
For the past 5 years there has been an 'imminent decline' predicted by you people.
Seriously, find a new game to hate.
Still waiting for your Holy Grail MMORPG? Interesting...