Much like believing doesn't make religion true, disbelieving WOW subscription numbers doesn't make it untrue.
The numbers are undoubtedly twisted in some way (the main way being China's subs which pay less, I imagine) but it takes more than a random pocket of quitting friends to bring down subscription numbers that large.
Even I think WOW has peaked, but if they're posting 11 million subs then that's almost certainly what they have.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
losing 1 million subs is huge, i don't care if they have 11 million subs, if 1 million people leave your game you are doing something wrong.
How about, they have been serving the same soup for 7 years, its time some customers go try drink something, or retired after drinking too much and puke.
I retired. But there is no soup that good yet out there. No other soup yet.
We have got to use to Blizzard's high numbers to realize something here.
Blizzard lost 1 million subs... THATS A LOT... all your friends that left, likely fit into that million. But millions more remain, lots of players are leaving. 1 Million may not sound like a lot compared to Blizzard's avg sub numbers, but it still is alot of people
Asian numbers aside (and remember that Asian numbers inflated the game's total sub count overnight due to the fact that Warcraft RPG had its own 24 hour a day channel in China lol)...
The US numbers are still larger than any other non Asian created mmorpg. So, a million subs might be a success story for a Western Hemisphere located mmorpg in general (ala RIFT which has probably 25-50% of that total), it's still not enough to breka WoW into a Free to Play model (as an example).
I play on Moonguard - and it's packed as much as (using recent mmo) RIFT after the first 2 weeks (there were 4 hour log in times in the first week on a handful of servers).
I am looking forward to WoW fans moving on to other things (like puberty and the Betty Ford Clinic for marijuana addiction) so that I can stand out just a tad more in a game that has been since 2004 - ridiculously Massively-Multiplayer.
I'd still rather have a unique sandbox game that is actually fun to play - but that will never happen this decade and that's a post for another topic.
We have got to use to Blizzard's high numbers to realize something here.
Blizzard lost 1 million subs... THATS A LOT... all your friends that left, likely fit into that million. But millions more remain, lots of players are leaving. 1 Million may not sound like a lot compared to Blizzard's avg sub numbers, but it still is alot of people
Asian numbers aside (and remember that Asian numbers inflated the game's total sub count overnight due to the fact that Warcraft RPG had its own 24 hour a day channel in China lol)...
The US numbers are still larger than any other non Asian created mmorpg. So, a million subs might be a success story for a Western Hemisphere located mmorpg in general (ala RIFT which has probably 25-50% of that total), it's still not enough to breka WoW into a Free to Play model (as an example).
I play on Moonguard - and it's packed as much as (using recent mmo) RIFT after the first 2 weeks (there were 4 hour log in times in the first week on a handful of servers).
I am looking forward to WoW fans moving on to other things (like puberty and the Betty Ford Clinic for marijuana addiction) so that I can stand out just a tad more in a game that has been since 2004 - ridiculously Massively-Multiplayer.
I'd still rather have a unique sandbox game that is actually fun to play - but that will never happen this decade and that's a post for another topic.
Betty ford clinic for marijuana addiction? haha, don't you mean alcohol..you know that legal drug thats more addictive than any other.
*puts up his firewall and engages the flame retardent mods*
Blizzard has always lied about its stats, there is two situations going on with blizzard that most people choose not to believe.
1)Every new quest and feature in wow goes through a panel of noted psychologists whose job is to advise and help tweak that new idea to be as addictive as possible, those are who you thank for the daily stuff etc.
2)Within there first year of business a certain marketing executive came up with the idea of doubling the subscription figures after all they are not legally bound to these figures, the idea was simple if they started a campaign of making people believe that twice the amount we believe play actually play then like sheep buying the most popular brand of soda subscriptions increase.
It became a self sustaining we say 2m and another million join because "hey its so good 2m play" we say 4m and 2m more will join.
And you never lower that marketing number.
Anyone who actually logs on and plays wow will see there numbers are down to about 3-4m max and that includes afk subscriptees.
Brilliant ideas from a marketing and business standpoint abit like the way pepsi and cola make you even more thirsty it may not be right or fair but what is in business.
^^ this
Anyone who disagrees is naive to how modern Corps work. If you say they are beholden to laws let me just remind you that CEO's this year had a 27% pay increase while the average worker had 1.5% increase................the cost of living went up 2.5%.
If you think these CEO's can't manipulate numbers or that someone is ACTUALLy watching them you're crazy.
You make it sound as if it is walk in the park. Considering country like America where people just wait for a reason to sue a company you are telling me it is just that easy haan? for a company like Blizzard it is not worth a risk to lie to investors and share holders. All for what? so that they can save face from internet Blizzard trolls? don't think so.
Not worth lieing? So you're telling me that if you bonus was going to be 5 million dollars as opposed to 15 million dollars there is no motivation there to lie?
Um, why do you think Corps fluff their earnings ever quarter? MMMM?
Ceo's nowdays make 10x more money in their bonuses than they do from salary.
Another poster already gave another very solid reason..............IF YOU SEEM POPULAR THAN YOU MUST BE............simple human nature.
Are people really wondering how Blizzard made more money this year.........Starcraft anyone?
losing 1 million subs is huge, i don't care if they have 11 million subs, if 1 million people leave your game you are doing something wrong.
How about, they have been serving the same soup for 7 years, its time some customers go try drink something, or retired after drinking too much and puke.
I retired. But there is no soup that good yet out there. No other soup yet.
Soup is a good analogy. If 11 million people show up at your restaurant for soup -- which was so delicious it attracted 11 million people -- then suddenly changing that soup to something completely different is obviously not a very smart way to run a restaurant.
It's a testament to the soup's taste that it lasted as long as it did.
It's laughable to claim they're "doing something wrong" by having created the longest-running game of that caliber of success.
If that's "doing it wrong" I can't wait for a company to do it wrong again! (Sadly we have plenty of companies genuinely doing it wrong.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
*puts up his firewall and engages the flame retardent mods*
Blizzard has always lied about its stats, there is two situations going on with blizzard that most people choose not to believe.
1)Every new quest and feature in wow goes through a panel of noted psychologists whose job is to advise and help tweak that new idea to be as addictive as possible, those are who you thank for the daily stuff etc.
2)Within there first year of business a certain marketing executive came up with the idea of doubling the subscription figures after all they are not legally bound to these figures, the idea was simple if they started a campaign of making people believe that twice the amount we believe play actually play then like sheep buying the most popular brand of soda subscriptions increase.
It became a self sustaining we say 2m and another million join because "hey its so good 2m play" we say 4m and 2m more will join.
And you never lower that marketing number.
Anyone who actually logs on and plays wow will see there numbers are down to about 3-4m max and that includes afk subscriptees.
Brilliant ideas from a marketing and business standpoint abit like the way pepsi and cola make you even more thirsty it may not be right or fair but what is in business.
^^ this
Anyone who disagrees is naive to how modern Corps work. If you say they are beholden to laws let me just remind you that CEO's this year had a 27% pay increase while the average worker had 1.5% increase................the cost of living went up 2.5%.
If you think these CEO's can't manipulate numbers or that someone is ACTUALLy watching them you're crazy.
You make it sound as if it is walk in the park. Considering country like America where people just wait for a reason to sue a company you are telling me it is just that easy haan? for a company like Blizzard it is not worth a risk to lie to investors and share holders. All for what? so that they can save face from internet Blizzard trolls? don't think so.
Not worth lieing? So you're telling me that if you bonus was going to be 5 million dollars as opposed to 15 million dollars there is no motivation there to lie?
Um, why do you think Corps fluff their earnings ever quarter? MMMM?
Ceo's nowdays make 10x more money in their bonuses than they do from salary.
Another poster already gave another very solid reason..............IF YOU SEEM POPULAR THAN YOU MUST BE............simple human nature.
Are people really wondering how Blizzard made more money this year.........Starcraft anyone?
You are generalising and expect every CEO of the company to behave in same manner. Unless you are a Blizzard insider and know something more than just just usual blabbering i would be more inclined to believe you till than i will gladly believe Blizzard over random forum users who generally have their own agenda behind posts like this.
Just curious OP as to why you care so much about WoW's sub numbers, it's not like anyone is able to play with lets say 11 mil. people, it's not even possible to play with 1 mil people at the same time and knowing them. So why are some so intrested in sub numbers, obviously they want a game to play that has people in it, but seriously making a topic to debunk WoW sub numbers as if.....
No particular reason. Forums exist so ppl can communicate each other express opinions and ideas right?
As to what motivated me to start this topic?
I simply read an article the other day reffering to some completely inaccurate things concerning situations and activity concerning a server i happen to know very well ,well enough to know the ppl that made that article lied, and so i felt like writing some truths i felt to report.
In general i d describe myself as a person that when he sees something wrong being advertised as right and tries to fool ppl that perhaps cant judge from personal expirience specific things ,well yes i have to write down my opinion.
After all we have democracy right?
hmm or not..?
Thanks for taking care of my innocence, I am too innocent to believe in the bullcrap Blizzard audited figures, that I need your out of the blue baseless speculations to right my wrong ideas.
What else do you know about your server, one server in hundreds. Can you tell me how many unique human beings are there behind the various accounts? Name and sex pls, oh add in age pls. Can you also tell us how many subs were active but it happens you never got to see the characters online? Can you also tell us how many have moved off to other servers, how many come?
What really do you really know? Start with a basic list, a control experiment design, a hypothesis and way to test against it, a way to extract the required observations, a design of desired observations, a sample, a distribution theory. Can you present your statistics, model, precision of estimates. Can you present a way to empirically verify your claims.
Yes you know, and you also know we do not know, and we need your you know to rectify our we do not know. What don we know? Who are we?
So much you really know.
On the topic, no one knows for sure, not for a fact, unless you are inside the corporate and at a high enough level of responsibility to know. Blizzard does not need to tell us more than it needs by law and it wants for its business purpose. I as a gamer in those days hardly care how many subs Blizzard has. I only know it was a decent game for those days.
I tend to trust published reports more than baseless speculation from a nobody, someone whose identity I cannot verify, and whose intention and vested interest I would never know, nor care to.
When you play 5 years in one server you know if not everyone ,almost everyone. Defias brotherhood was the most populated and best rp-pvp server in wow eu. It had alot of hordes and a lot of alliance especially during vanilla a little allies during bc. Nowdays horde side is overpopulated and allies are smaller in numbers.
As i stated in my main thread ,and provided you have reasoning to read carefully and understand what a person writes and means , i spoke from personal expirience after playing especially the first 4 years average 8 hours per day. So yes when im saying that a number of 200 ppl i happen to knew inside the server that quitted its not a speculation.. its a fact. U have any idea how many times i was talking with friends,guildies or guys from other guilds online ,when we talking about other persons that played i got answers like John quitted? Netherwind ,Elendria,Zax quitted? i could write names till tomorrow.
What u personally trust is yours and yours alone decision. For some reason though in your 1st 13 lines of response i see you respond like u got offended or something. Are you a working wow guardian or something? Cause apart reporting what i observed from rl friends and ppl i met inside the game i dont recall blaming wow for something.
Do you think i care about your innocense?
Did i ever said you have wrong ideas that i need to right them up?
Yeah, it is dying, but I doubt it dies. It will probably keep 2-3 million subs at some point in the future, and run along like a more populated EQ1, that still gets content.
Blizzard will release new mmos and other companies that people want to try. Games age, change (and not everyone likes changes), and get old.
It has made them a ton of cash. I never subbed (only beta tested it), just wasn't my thing. I just hope we can start getting more innovation, and less cloning in the near future.
I'm not a wow player but aren't the large majority of those subs the asian ones, and they have a different model in asia that makes the numbers look a lot better than they actually are? More like registerd users than monthly subscribers?
the ongoing demise of WoW is by and large, in the imagination of the WoW haters... totally hillarious tbh, its always the same arguments, but WoW refuses to play along, and instead.. keeps on going as strong as ever.. instead the title of the topic should read.. WoW has 11 million subs! not by chance. but because.. despite the rhetoric.. its a popular game.
We all read about the drop in subs numbers in wow during the last months. Many ppl got tired from same and same staff etc etc
I m sitting and thinking thoughall real life friends that i have which happened to play wow. From 4 close friends if mine all 4 have stopped wow during the last year.Another group of 6 guys we used to have a guild and playing in wow (not that close rl friends) all have stopped as well. 2 friens of their the one stopped permanently the other re-subs from time to time.
What is common in all these 10-12 guys i mention is the age. They are all 26-34 y old. 9 of them were playing from vanilla times, the rest 3 joined at bc.
The piece of pie as a number of 12 ppl yes its small. But its more than characteristic and its impossible to be a coincidence.
We are talking here 11 out of 12 quitted and 1 only is subbing from time to time. Its what? 92 % or something? And we talking here about ppl that were harcore raiders or arena junkies ,ppl that used to spend 6-10 hours per day for years.. it was a way of life to them not just a game..we r talking about addicted ppl i know very well here..Allthough they quitted.
Another thing. I spended 5 years in playing in defias brotherhood server. I joined from its launch day 1 and used to know very well almost all ppl inside. I had friends ( some very good friends ) inside 2-3 different guilds. I know for a fact if not all..most of them quitted..some of them in bc, many of them in Wotlk, and most of them in cataclysm. Here we are not talking about 10 or 12 ppl my friends.. im speaking a bout at least 200-250 from alliance side ppl that i know for a fact that they quitted wow.
Some will say ok some ppl quit wow some new players to mmorpg genre join (youngsters mostly) . Prob is , i dont think the join rate is that high as the quit rate in wow right now. And tbh from rl friends side i dont know anyone thathappened to joined wow last year or 2 .. but i do know 12 ppl that quitted.
Apart that i never trust numbers from statistics ,cause i believe like many other things in our life, things even way more important than a game like wow, are being manipulated and presented with lies..
So yes i dont think wow has 11 k milion active subs.
My belief is a number around 4-5 million subs right now.. and thats in best case ..
You don't think the join rate is "that high"? You mean 12 people?
Your basing this all off about 12 people, get a larger amount of people to actually make assumptions, these are where fallacies originate. Just because things happen around you doesn't mean the same thing happens around the world.
I mean I know you want wow to die, but it won't., for a pretty long time.
Just curious OP as to why you care so much about WoW's sub numbers, it's not like anyone is able to play with lets say 11 mil. people, it's not even possible to play with 1 mil people at the same time and knowing them. So why are some so intrested in sub numbers, obviously they want a game to play that has people in it, but seriously making a topic to debunk WoW sub numbers as if.....
No particular reason. Forums exist so ppl can communicate each other express opinions and ideas right?
As to what motivated me to start this topic?
I simply read an article the other day reffering to some completely inaccurate things concerning situations and activity concerning a server i happen to know very well ,well enough to know the ppl that made that article lied, and so i felt like writing some truths i felt to report.
In general i d describe myself as a person that when he sees something wrong being advertised as right and tries to fool ppl that perhaps cant judge from personal expirience specific things ,well yes i have to write down my opinion.
After all we have democracy right?
hmm or not..?
Thanks for taking care of my innocence, I am too innocent to believe in the bullcrap Blizzard audited figures, that I need your out of the blue baseless speculations to right my wrong ideas.
What else do you know about your server, one server in hundreds. Can you tell me how many unique human beings are there behind the various accounts? Name and sex pls, oh add in age pls. Can you also tell us how many subs were active but it happens you never got to see the characters online? Can you also tell us how many have moved off to other servers, how many come?
What really do you really know? Start with a basic list, a control experiment design, a hypothesis and way to test against it, a way to extract the required observations, a design of desired observations, a sample, a distribution theory. Can you present your statistics, model, precision of estimates. Can you present a way to empirically verify your claims.
Yes you know, and you also know we do not know, and we need your you know to rectify our we do not know. What don we know? Who are we?
So much you really know.
On the topic, no one knows for sure, not for a fact, unless you are inside the corporate and at a high enough level of responsibility to know. Blizzard does not need to tell us more than it needs by law and it wants for its business purpose. I as a gamer in those days hardly care how many subs Blizzard has. I only know it was a decent game for those days.
I tend to trust published reports more than baseless speculation from a nobody, someone whose identity I cannot verify, and whose intention and vested interest I would never know, nor care to.
When you play 5 years in one server you know if not everyone ,almost everyone. Defias brotherhood was the most populated and best rp-pvp server in wow eu. It had alot of hordes and a lot of alliance especially during vanilla a little allies during bc. Nowdays horde side is overpopulated and allies are smaller in numbers.
As i stated in my main thread ,and provided you have reasoning to read carefully and understand what a person writes and means , i spoke from personal expirience after playing especially the first 4 years average 8 hours per day. So yes when im saying that a number of 200 ppl i happen to knew inside the server that quitted its not a speculation.. its a fact. U have any idea how many times i was talking with friends,guildies or guys from other guilds online ,when we talking about other persons that played i got answers like John quitted? Netherwind ,Elendria,Zax quitted? i could write names till tomorrow.
What u personally trust is yours and yours alone decision. For some reason though in your 1st 13 lines of response i see you respond like u got offended or something. Are you a working wow guardian or something? Cause apart reporting what i observed from rl friends and ppl i met inside the game i dont recall blaming wow for something.
Do you think i care about your innocense?
Did i ever said you have wrong ideas that i need to right them up?
Do you think you are the center of the world?
Do you think you need a shrink?
Look at what you write, I repeat for you here "ppl that perhaps cant judge from personal expirience". Apart from the spelling, what is wrong there? Look at the defence above?
You know almost everyone, you know them because you talk to them via the game chat and suddenly you know them. Oh really, did it occur to you that sometimes people do not confide everything to you?
200 people left, that is all you know and that represent the population lost in a server? Or, that represent 200 handles (names of alts) that you no longer can trace, due to name changing, server changing, side changing. That represent only 200 of the many names that have vanished but the rest you do not know. And with only 200 you can remember you dare say you know everyone. How laughable.
From statistics alone, I have reason to believe your 200 is not the everyone that have left your server. Blizz said that have lost many, and only retained 11-12million currently. They keep losing and they keep recruiting. If they lost 1million overall, then on average, how many is lost from your server? 200? Good maths.
Am I a WoW guardian? Can you read? I wrote many times I left WoW long ago. As an analyst at work, I see holes in your faith and excess "confidence" in counselling us "innocents who cannot judge on our own". I am just showing you a mirror. Take it or leave it, matter not to me.
All I can say, and I will repeat here, is that at least there is another source, more reliable than your personal experience, if I am to judge WoW population. Should I judge? If I am not playing?
op!wow is world wide just because usa doesnt play it much (i would say there prob around 1 million in america playing it.so where are all the other 10 million you are corect that they arent in america. they are in china asian and other country.so i wouldnt be surprised to ear wow has 14 million player.america is a small market for wow now not their main player base now a days!
I'm not a wow player but aren't the large majority of those subs the asian ones, and they have a different model in asia that makes the numbers look a lot better than they actually are? More like registerd users than monthly subscribers?
There are official statistics every year or so, from Blizzard. Clear definition.
There are 4-5m subs in US/EU, off my head, and I can be wrong, you can go check or google it. The rest are all over the world. There was once a study showing that quite a lot of crossover exist. Asian people playing on US/EU servers, Caucasians playing in Asian servers.
I use to play in Asian servers during my earlier stations in China and Korean/Japan. As a lazy guy who do not want to install local language pack, I naturally cannot type local language, and so have to type English. Happen to find quite some English speaking people there, and hence met them in person, eventually. Just a wonderful way to find Westerners in the East.
I think Cataclysm really kind of ended the 'Golden Era' for WoW.
We've all said that what ultimately kills WoW will likely be WoW itself. I don't think any 1 game can take WoW on and win. I just don't.
It has taken time and multiple new game releases (to compete with WoW) as well as WoW's own expansions (and game changes) to really begin this 'decline' that the game is on.
Chicken Little... is the sky falling?
I'd be shocked to see WoW recover those numbers and reverse the trend. It's reasonable to believe that WoW may lose another 2-3 million over the next 6-9 months as SW:TOR and GW2 (ETA for Launch?) are released.
I think Blizz's new MMO will help drive the decline of WoW even further.
...
Of all of the things that have changed in WoW that I dislike the most... the new dungeons and fight mechanics.
I think Cataclysm really kind of ended the 'Golden Era' for WoW.
We've all said that what ultimately kills WoW will likely be WoW itself. I don't think any 1 game can take WoW on and win. I just don't.
It has taken time and multiple new game releases (to compete with WoW) as well as WoW's own expansions (and game changes) to really begin this 'decline' that the game is on.
Chicken Little... is the sky falling?
I'd be shocked to see WoW recover those numbers and reverse the trend. It's reasonable to believe that WoW may lose another 2-3 million over the next 6-9 months as SW:TOR and GW2 (ETA for Launch?) are released.
I think Blizz's new MMO will help drive the decline of WoW even further.
...
Of all of the things that have changed in WoW that I dislike the most... the new dungeons and fight mechanics.
Technically it’s Blizzard that killed WoW but I’m just splitting hairs at that point; though WoW is WoW a product of its design & its downfall is its own fault... shutting up now. Can't say you’re wrong about WoW losing more subs over the next 9 months due to competition and a new face to the game; but one thing i think is that Blizzard doesn’t know what it’s are doing. Blizzard got lucky with WoWs success we have known that for ages; with BC they did ok, Wrath they went down hard, and Cata(post cata as well) they screwed themselves with bad development choices. It’s to the point where I honestly don't think Blizzard has the skill with MMOs everyone attributes to them.
It is best for the industry the MMO throne remains an dusty empty seat never to be filled.
Ok, many posters apparently have no idea that if Blizzard is lying about WoW subscriptions the top officers(CEO, CFO, and others) would be thrown in jail, and/or, at least heavily fined.
They can not lie or mislead in their financial statements. There is absolutely no incentive for Blizzard to lie about this. The punishment is just too great.
I think Cataclysm really kind of ended the 'Golden Era' for WoW.
We've all said that what ultimately kills WoW will likely be WoW itself. I don't think any 1 game can take WoW on and win. I just don't.
It has taken time and multiple new game releases (to compete with WoW) as well as WoW's own expansions (and game changes) to really begin this 'decline' that the game is on.
Chicken Little... is the sky falling?
I'd be shocked to see WoW recover those numbers and reverse the trend. It's reasonable to believe that WoW may lose another 2-3 million over the next 6-9 months as SW:TOR and GW2 (ETA for Launch?) are released.
I think Blizz's new MMO will help drive the decline of WoW even further.
...
Of all of the things that have changed in WoW that I dislike the most... the new dungeons and fight mechanics.
While this forum will jump for joy if WoW declines further, I suspect the loss in US/EU will be somewhat negated due to the new markets WoW was introduced to recently; Brazil and other Latin America countries.
No idea on what the sub model in those countries are but I don't see a 2-3M loss in the next year.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Ok, many posters apparently have no idea that if Blizzard is lying about WoW subscriptions the top officers(CEO, CFO, and others) would be thrown in jail, and/or, at least heavily fined.
They can not lie or mislead in their financial statements. There is absolutely no incentive for Blizzard to lie about this. The punishment is just too great.
Quite a few on this forum are too young or too inexperienced to know about the process of auditing, and the legal process of publishing annual reports. They might think it is just as casual and baseless as posting in a thread here.
Comments
Much like believing doesn't make religion true, disbelieving WOW subscription numbers doesn't make it untrue.
The numbers are undoubtedly twisted in some way (the main way being China's subs which pay less, I imagine) but it takes more than a random pocket of quitting friends to bring down subscription numbers that large.
Even I think WOW has peaked, but if they're posting 11 million subs then that's almost certainly what they have.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
losing 1 million subs is huge, i don't care if they have 11 million subs, if 1 million people leave your game you are doing something wrong.
How about, they have been serving the same soup for 7 years, its time some customers go try drink something, or retired after drinking too much and puke.
I retired. But there is no soup that good yet out there. No other soup yet.
i stopped having fun with mmo's years ago, i only come here to voice me distaste at the genre..talk about stagnant.
Asian numbers aside (and remember that Asian numbers inflated the game's total sub count overnight due to the fact that Warcraft RPG had its own 24 hour a day channel in China lol)...
The US numbers are still larger than any other non Asian created mmorpg. So, a million subs might be a success story for a Western Hemisphere located mmorpg in general (ala RIFT which has probably 25-50% of that total), it's still not enough to breka WoW into a Free to Play model (as an example).
I play on Moonguard - and it's packed as much as (using recent mmo) RIFT after the first 2 weeks (there were 4 hour log in times in the first week on a handful of servers).
I am looking forward to WoW fans moving on to other things (like puberty and the Betty Ford Clinic for marijuana addiction) so that I can stand out just a tad more in a game that has been since 2004 - ridiculously Massively-Multiplayer.
I'd still rather have a unique sandbox game that is actually fun to play - but that will never happen this decade and that's a post for another topic.
Betty ford clinic for marijuana addiction? haha, don't you mean alcohol..you know that legal drug thats more addictive than any other.
Not worth lieing? So you're telling me that if you bonus was going to be 5 million dollars as opposed to 15 million dollars there is no motivation there to lie?
Um, why do you think Corps fluff their earnings ever quarter? MMMM?
Ceo's nowdays make 10x more money in their bonuses than they do from salary.
Another poster already gave another very solid reason..............IF YOU SEEM POPULAR THAN YOU MUST BE............simple human nature.
Are people really wondering how Blizzard made more money this year.........Starcraft anyone?
Soup is a good analogy. If 11 million people show up at your restaurant for soup -- which was so delicious it attracted 11 million people -- then suddenly changing that soup to something completely different is obviously not a very smart way to run a restaurant.
It's a testament to the soup's taste that it lasted as long as it did.
It's laughable to claim they're "doing something wrong" by having created the longest-running game of that caliber of success.
If that's "doing it wrong" I can't wait for a company to do it wrong again! (Sadly we have plenty of companies genuinely doing it wrong.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You are generalising and expect every CEO of the company to behave in same manner. Unless you are a Blizzard insider and know something more than just just usual blabbering i would be more inclined to believe you till than i will gladly believe Blizzard over random forum users who generally have their own agenda behind posts like this.
By the way how many CEO's do you know?
WoW is dying.
But it still has more lives than any other game ¬_¬
FEEL THE FULL
FREE-TO-FLAME
FANTASY.
When you play 5 years in one server you know if not everyone ,almost everyone. Defias brotherhood was the most populated and best rp-pvp server in wow eu. It had alot of hordes and a lot of alliance especially during vanilla a little allies during bc. Nowdays horde side is overpopulated and allies are smaller in numbers.
As i stated in my main thread ,and provided you have reasoning to read carefully and understand what a person writes and means , i spoke from personal expirience after playing especially the first 4 years average 8 hours per day. So yes when im saying that a number of 200 ppl i happen to knew inside the server that quitted its not a speculation.. its a fact. U have any idea how many times i was talking with friends,guildies or guys from other guilds online ,when we talking about other persons that played i got answers like John quitted? Netherwind ,Elendria,Zax quitted? i could write names till tomorrow.
What u personally trust is yours and yours alone decision. For some reason though in your 1st 13 lines of response i see you respond like u got offended or something. Are you a working wow guardian or something? Cause apart reporting what i observed from rl friends and ppl i met inside the game i dont recall blaming wow for something.
Do you think i care about your innocense?
Did i ever said you have wrong ideas that i need to right them up?
Do you think you are the center of the world?
Do you think you need a shrink?
This is 100% not true, unless its a small server.
Yeah, it is dying, but I doubt it dies. It will probably keep 2-3 million subs at some point in the future, and run along like a more populated EQ1, that still gets content.
Blizzard will release new mmos and other companies that people want to try. Games age, change (and not everyone likes changes), and get old.
It has made them a ton of cash. I never subbed (only beta tested it), just wasn't my thing. I just hope we can start getting more innovation, and less cloning in the near future.
I'm not a wow player but aren't the large majority of those subs the asian ones, and they have a different model in asia that makes the numbers look a lot better than they actually are? More like registerd users than monthly subscribers?
It's still largely populated. Mists of Pandaland makes me shudder in fear for the future of WoW, however. If it is for WoW, that is.
the ongoing demise of WoW is by and large, in the imagination of the WoW haters... totally hillarious tbh, its always the same arguments, but WoW refuses to play along, and instead.. keeps on going as strong as ever.. instead the title of the topic should read.. WoW has 11 million subs! not by chance. but because.. despite the rhetoric.. its a popular game.
You don't think the join rate is "that high"? You mean 12 people?
Your basing this all off about 12 people, get a larger amount of people to actually make assumptions, these are where fallacies originate. Just because things happen around you doesn't mean the same thing happens around the world.
I mean I know you want wow to die, but it won't., for a pretty long time.
Tbrown, Love me or die!
Look at what you write, I repeat for you here "ppl that perhaps cant judge from personal expirience". Apart from the spelling, what is wrong there? Look at the defence above?
You know almost everyone, you know them because you talk to them via the game chat and suddenly you know them. Oh really, did it occur to you that sometimes people do not confide everything to you?
200 people left, that is all you know and that represent the population lost in a server? Or, that represent 200 handles (names of alts) that you no longer can trace, due to name changing, server changing, side changing. That represent only 200 of the many names that have vanished but the rest you do not know. And with only 200 you can remember you dare say you know everyone. How laughable.
From statistics alone, I have reason to believe your 200 is not the everyone that have left your server. Blizz said that have lost many, and only retained 11-12million currently. They keep losing and they keep recruiting. If they lost 1million overall, then on average, how many is lost from your server? 200? Good maths.
Am I a WoW guardian? Can you read? I wrote many times I left WoW long ago. As an analyst at work, I see holes in your faith and excess "confidence" in counselling us "innocents who cannot judge on our own". I am just showing you a mirror. Take it or leave it, matter not to me.
All I can say, and I will repeat here, is that at least there is another source, more reliable than your personal experience, if I am to judge WoW population. Should I judge? If I am not playing?
op!wow is world wide just because usa doesnt play it much (i would say there prob around 1 million in america playing it.so where are all the other 10 million
you are corect that they arent in america.
they are in china asian and other country.so i wouldnt be surprised to ear wow has 14 million player.america is a small market for wow now not their main player base now a days!
There are official statistics every year or so, from Blizzard. Clear definition.
There are 4-5m subs in US/EU, off my head, and I can be wrong, you can go check or google it. The rest are all over the world. There was once a study showing that quite a lot of crossover exist. Asian people playing on US/EU servers, Caucasians playing in Asian servers.
I use to play in Asian servers during my earlier stations in China and Korean/Japan. As a lazy guy who do not want to install local language pack, I naturally cannot type local language, and so have to type English. Happen to find quite some English speaking people there, and hence met them in person, eventually. Just a wonderful way to find Westerners in the East.
I think Cataclysm really kind of ended the 'Golden Era' for WoW.
We've all said that what ultimately kills WoW will likely be WoW itself. I don't think any 1 game can take WoW on and win. I just don't.
It has taken time and multiple new game releases (to compete with WoW) as well as WoW's own expansions (and game changes) to really begin this 'decline' that the game is on.
Chicken Little... is the sky falling?
I'd be shocked to see WoW recover those numbers and reverse the trend. It's reasonable to believe that WoW may lose another 2-3 million over the next 6-9 months as SW:TOR and GW2 (ETA for Launch?) are released.
I think Blizz's new MMO will help drive the decline of WoW even further.
...
Of all of the things that have changed in WoW that I dislike the most... the new dungeons and fight mechanics.
Technically it’s Blizzard that killed WoW but I’m just splitting hairs at that point; though WoW is WoW a product of its design & its downfall is its own fault... shutting up now. Can't say you’re wrong about WoW losing more subs over the next 9 months due to competition and a new face to the game; but one thing i think is that Blizzard doesn’t know what it’s are doing. Blizzard got lucky with WoWs success we have known that for ages; with BC they did ok, Wrath they went down hard, and Cata(post cata as well) they screwed themselves with bad development choices. It’s to the point where I honestly don't think Blizzard has the skill with MMOs everyone attributes to them.
It is best for the industry the MMO throne remains an dusty empty seat never to be filled.
Ok, many posters apparently have no idea that if Blizzard is lying about WoW subscriptions the top officers(CEO, CFO, and others) would be thrown in jail, and/or, at least heavily fined.
They can not lie or mislead in their financial statements. There is absolutely no incentive for Blizzard to lie about this. The punishment is just too great.
While this forum will jump for joy if WoW declines further, I suspect the loss in US/EU will be somewhat negated due to the new markets WoW was introduced to recently; Brazil and other Latin America countries.
No idea on what the sub model in those countries are but I don't see a 2-3M loss in the next year.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Quite a few on this forum are too young or too inexperienced to know about the process of auditing, and the legal process of publishing annual reports. They might think it is just as casual and baseless as posting in a thread here.